1 + 2 = high drama

April 18, 2005 7:58 PM

The Mathematical Fiction Homepage is a collaborative attempt to "collect information about all significant references to mathematics in fiction." Feel free to add classic or recent works in any medium to the collection, or rate existing entries on their mathematical content and literary quality.
posted by mediareport (8 comments total)

To be added: the 2006 federal budget.
posted by fatllama at 8:38 PM on April 18, 2005

From The Limit of Delta X Over Delta Y:

Jim ignored her. "Let's say two people together make a couple. We'll call the male y and the female x. And let's say that in this couple, the way they function together is such that the male is dominant by a power of two. That means y=x2. It's a curve. You can plot it on a graph," He drew the parabola in the air for them. "So, assuming x =10 for the initial value of the female, this fixes y = 100 as the initial value of the male. Got it so far? Okay, suppose x increases to x = 12, what's the change in x and y?"

Magda said, "Delta x is 2, delta y is 44."

"Very good. Now if you plug in different values, you see that as x diminishes, so does y. As the influence of the female diminishes, so does the male's This to me is the interesting part. They work together as a co-dependent unit. They're tied to each other. The thing we want to find out is, when you compare the change in x with the change in y, what's the limit of the ratio, delta y over delta x, as delta x approaches zero?"

Pure poetry.
posted by painquale at 9:01 PM on April 18, 2005

Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results...
posted by dreamsign at 9:35 PM on April 18, 2005

Too bad it's only fiction, because wouldn't Hundred Thousand Billion Poems be a great addition?

Wikpediai: "Raymond Queneau’s Hundred Thousand Billion Poems or One hundred million million poems (original French title: Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes), published in 1961, is a set of ten sonnets. They are printed on card with each line on a separated strip, like a heads-bodies-and-legs book. As all ten sonnets have not just the same rhyme scheme but the same rhyme sounds, any lines from a sonnet can be combined with any from the nine others, so that there are 1014 (= 100,000,000,000,000) different poems. It would take some 200,000,000 years to read them all, even reading twenty-four hours a day."

Here's an internet version to play with.
posted by taz at 11:47 PM on April 18, 2005

dreamsign: one of the greatest movies ever.
posted by Dark Messiah at 7:02 AM on April 19, 2005

This is pretty cool.
posted by mikeweeney at 7:11 AM on April 19, 2005

Bart: Hello there, fellow Shelbyvillians.

Martin2: Wait a minute. If you're from Shelbyville, how come we've never seen you at school?

Bart: I don't go to school.

Nelson2: OK. What's two plus two?

Bart: Five.

Nelson2: Oh. Story checks out.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 7:19 AM on April 19, 2005

No love for this thread?

I'd bookmarked this link seconds after I saw it.
posted by dreamsign at 6:45 PM on April 20, 2005