Math for English Majors

3 annotations • data

First annotation on Nov 21st, 2024. Last on Dec 9th, 2025.

In English, there are three basic kinds of sentences. Declaratives are statements ("The sky is blue"); interrogatives are questions ("Is the sky blue?"); and imperatives are commands ("Go paint the sky blue").
The sci-fi writer John Scalzi has a crackpot theory that I love: every strawberry on Earth, no matter how large or small, has the same total amount of flavor. Big strawberries spread their flavor thin, with a faint trace in every bite. Tiny strawberries pack their flavor dense, with a wallop in every nibble. Call it the strawberry formula: flavor intensity is inversely proportional to strawberry volume.
Not every whodunit is so pleasing. In some cases, you may run into a cheap or uninteresting solution, like a mystery novel that's obvious from the second page. This is known as a trivial solution. For example, x + 2x = x is a pretty juicy whodunit: "A number's cube is equal to its square plus its double." However, before you get to any interesting solutions, you stumble into a boring one: x = 0. Zero's cube, square, and double are all zero, so the equation boils down to 0 + 0 = 0. True, but dull. In this way, a trivial solution is logically satisfying, but not emotionally satisfying. It satisfies your equation, but not your curiosity.