I must have really been in a mathematical mood on Friday. The words in the title of the post, by design, did not only apply to my immediate concerns, but also to mathematics.
A map is basically like a spreadsheet where items in the first column are the inputs for which the map is defined and the other columns in that row are its values. You can’t write all maps out as spreadsheets though, due to the fact that there are such things as uncountable sets.
A point is a zero dimensional object, generally referred to by a set of coordinates.
Intersection is an operation one may do on sets: the items shared mutually by two collections comprises their intersection.
I have been avoiding tipping my mathematical hand, but events later in the evening have forced a show down. In particular I was hanging out with some friends elsewhere in Brooklyn, and because of a previous conversation I wrote out a proof of why the reals are uncountable.
I mention this to segue to a story about the most useful random Asian ever. We were in a walk-up and decided to go get some food, but we went down a stairwell with a locked exit. We were stuck with either walking back up stairs to walk back down stairs, or somehow finding a way to unlock the door. We started asking people walking by if they could open the door because the key to unlock it was in the other side. Then we caught the attention of the most useful random Asian ever who began helping us. But, “The key is broken!” and our hopes of getting out without extra effort were dashed. She then said, “Maybe I have my leatherman in my purse.” That’s not too unusual, a person carrying around a leatherman… She then proceeded to remove a crescent wrench from her purse, turn the key and let us out. She continued on her merry way and we proceeded to get some scrumptious sustenance. And that’s why she’s the most useful random Asian ever.
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