1 post tagged “mathematics”

My friend the Mathemagician posited the following troubling development with an associate of his:

As the Mathemagician, I have lived my life under the assumption that the world operated under both the mathematical and philosophical principles of transitivity.  You know the transitive property.  Really, you do.

It's the property that says, "If A implies B, and B implies C, then A implies C". Here's an example:

A = It is raining
B = Water is on the ground
C = The ground is wet

So, if it is raining, then water is on the ground. If water is on the ground, then the ground is wet…And by the transitive property, we all know that if it is raining, then the ground is wet.  A implies C.  Makes sense, right?

Here's where the Mathemagician gets bamboozled.  Let's assign new values to A, B, and C:

A = a habitually drunk guy who is disrespectful towards women and pees on things when he's drunk
B = a guy for whom no woman should have amorous intent
C = a guy who does not have a girlfriend

Okay, let's verify this.  Does A imply B?  Yeah.  Does B imply C?  Uh huh.  So, obviously, A implies C.  It's a no-brainer!  I mean, come on! Oh, wait.  It doesn't.  Nope, it doesn't. Huh?  The Mathemagician is confused.  I don't want her to get hurt.

I have Word Fu wisdom for you, Mathemagician.

Several additional characters, the alphabet apocrypha, exist between the letters B and C. You don't hear these letters in That Song, and you won't see these characters in elementary school rooms, as their deletion from the alphabet proper caused huge dissent and armed conflict in the alphabetic community back in the year [redacted]. You only learn about them in grad school, and only if you take Professor [redacted]'s class at [redacted] U.

The first character, [redacted], looks a great deal like the Batman symbol and signifies "but I'm sure all he needs is the love of a good woman, and I'm just that woman; he simply hasn't met anyone as special as me--he told me so." The reason for its original removal from the alphabet: a group of neutral parties called bullshit on that.

The second character, [redacted], bears no small resemblance to the Chuck E. Cheese logo and signifies “you know, he hurts. He drinks because he hurts. And because he’s passionate. And intense. He peed on my checkbook, cat, and favorite green cotton sweater because he’s so intensely passionate, and in pain. There’s something so tragic and romantic about a tortured genius—my tortured genius.” This letter was stricken from the alphabet because no one wanted to go over to its house because it smelled of stale beer, urine, feet, and last week’s King Ranch Casserole.

The third character, [redacted], technically had no pronunciation, although many refer to it as Prince, and signifies, simply, “overwhelmingly hot sex.” According to a Dr. Roger Nelson, a scholar who served as Secretary to the Great Alphabetic Conclave of [redacted], this character’s fate was already hanging in the balance on the fateful day it refused to attend the Conclave to speak on its own behalf. In his seminal work on alphabet apocrypha—It’s As Simple as A, B, [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], C—he relates that he called the character on that day to remind him of Conclave: “It just picked up the phone, dropped it on the floor, [redacted] [redacted], was all I heard.”

The existence of these invisible characters explains the breakdown in transitive logic. Because these rogue alphabandits work unseen and outside the linear, causal systems on which logic relies, their effect is all the more sinister. Mathemagicians would be wise to include these incalculable effects in their calculations, or find themselves, as they say, bamboozled.

HTH! J