this morning we were talking about work. she happened to have a few blueprints(?) in her bag of what her firm was doing and how many simultaneous processes the proposed factory would be using.
it seemed very complicated to me .. like an electric circuit diagram on steroids!
then an idea came to mind .. maybe it can be my turn! .. so on her computer i showed her one of my preprints. her brow furrowed.
the basic idea's isn't that bad, i tell her.we then talked about how, at a certain point, maths no longer consists of calculating things .. not exactly, anyway.
for things that behave like mass distributions, the small-scale behavior can sometimes determine the large-scale. if, for example, there aren't enough directions when you zoom in at any given point, then the mass has to be distributed either like dust [1] or be restricted to fewer dimensions, like a line in space.
then there was a brief pause.
wait, she said, it takes 27 pages to explain that?!?
i shrugged.
well, the latest version is now 29 pages [2].
[1] i.e. a fractal with non-integer hausdοrff dimensiοn, but not necessarily self-simιlar. at the time i was thinking about purely unrectifιable subsets of the plane.
[2] thinking about it, maybe i should have said something like: well, define "dust" ..?
*NOTE* the new label ½ × 2 is meant to tag those (few) posts which are about how mathematics, for inexplicable reasons, relates to my relationships. the idea is: once you've been with someone long enough, you are no longer 1 person. rather, you are one-half of two people. (-:
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