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I got an e-mail from a friend earlier, and if I didn't know any better, I'd say it was me, posing as a girl, sending myself an e-mail, because it was totally something I would think about. I immediately had to start writing this post. Here's what she said: "also i like that this year is gonn abe [sic] 2008 because i like writng [sic] the nuber [sic] 8. just thought you would like to know." (just in case some of you are not familiar with what's in the square brackets, here is the definition from wikipedia: "...in writing, [sic] is placed within square brackets and usually italicized to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation, and/or other preceding quoted material has been reproduced verbatim from the quoted original and is not a transcription error." I, of course, never make transcription errors, or any other errors for that matter. Meanwhile, I have just been informed that the e-mail typer was "tired" az she should be given a get-out-of-jail-free card this time around. I've always used that excuse when I've accidentally ended a clause with a preposition, or when I've accidentally put one space after a period instead of two. Oh no, wait, how silly of me; there are no excuses.) At that point I started thinking, well, how many different ways are there to write an eight?

I determined that there are three ways:

1. I start at the top and move my pencil to the left and down, and do the entire figure eight without lifting my pencil. When I get back to the top I curve around again so I meet the beginning of the eight.

2. Some people like to do almost the same thing. The only difference is instead of curving around at the end, they just extend the line in the same direction, az it looks like the eight has a tail coming out of the top.

3. The weirdos out there like to draw two small "o"s that connect. IMHO, that takes entirely too long. I also don't enjoy when they are written quickly and the two halves don't actually touch. Then it just looks like a big colon.

I think my favorite numbers to write are "4," "5," and "9." Here's a funny story about writing the number nine. My junior year of college, I took a math course called Modern Analysis. It's a very theoretical discipline, az it's pretty hard to actually teach and learn. Anyway, a third of the way through the semester we had our first exam. Class went from 9:10 to 10:25 am, az the teacher, Patrick X. Gallagher, head of the math department and maniacal shirt-perspirer, would write the time on the chalkboard to let us know how much time we had left. Az since he wrote like "Time now: 9:35. Time left: 50 minutes," my friend and I actually discussed later how much we enjoyed the way he wrote the number nine. It occurred to us that we never noticed it until then because it was the first time all semester that he actually wrote the number nine. Modern Analysis is so theoretical that the only actual numbers he ever wrote were zero, one, and occasionally two. Otherwise he would only use variables. I hope I didn't lose any of you there. Better than writing about sports I guess.

Oh, and as long as I mentioned it earlier in my digression on "[sic]," I'd like to make sure that you all know the difference between parentheses, square brackets, and curly braces. Those things around the "sic" are square brackets. They're mostly used in math for matrices. Everyone knows what parentheses are, I hope. They're used in math to determine order of operations, in combinatorics, and when naming functions (e.g. f(x) is a function of x). Curly braces: { and } are mostly used in computer programming, but also in math for describing sets and probabilities, and for functions that have different definitions depending on the argument. For example:
f(x)
= {0 x<= 0
= {x x>0

Whenever I get a new student to tutor I always make sure that they know how to draw curly braces. If anyone wants a drawing lesson let me know. I charge $80 an hour. Good day all.