From: suzanne@mailhub.scf.lmsc.lockheed.com (Suzanne Barrett)
Subject: Re: Impure Mathematics
Organization: Lockheed Santa Cruz, CA.
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 14:08:46 GMT

In article <5887@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> dnd@ee.man.ac.uk (Darryl Davis (RA)) writes:

>A friend of mine passed this snippet along. It may amuse...


>                       Impure Mathematics

>       Once upon a time (1/t) pretty little Polly Nomial was strolling across
>a field of vectors when she came to the edge of a singularly large matrix.

>       Now Polly was convergent and her mother had made it an absolute
>condition that she must never enter such an array without her brackets on.
>Polly, however, who had changed her variables that morning and was feeling
>particularly badly behaved, ignored this condition on the grounds that it was
>Znsufficient and made her way amongst the complex elements.

>       Rows and columns enveloped her on all sides.  Tangents approached her
>surface.  She became tensor and tensor.  Quite suddenly, three branches of a
>hyperbola touched her at a single point.  She oscillated violently, lost all
>sense of directrix, and went completely divergent.  As she reached a turning
>point she tripped over a square root which was protruding from the erf and
>plunged headlong down a steep gradient.  When she was differentiated once more
>she found herself, apparently alone, in a noneuclidean space.

>       She was being watched however.  That smooth operator, Curly Pi, was
>lurking inner product.  As his eyes devoured her curvilinear coordinates a
>singular expression crossed his face.  Was she still convergent, he wondered.
>He decide to integrate improperly at once.


>       Hearing a vulgar fraction behind her, Polly turned around and saw
>Curly Pi approaching with his power series extrapolated.  She could see at
>once, by his degenerate conic and his disparitive terms that he was bent on
>no good.

>       "Heureka," she gasped.

>       "Ho, ho," he said.  "What a symmetric little polynomial you are.  I can
>see you're absolutely bubbling over with secs."

>       "O sir," she protested, "keep away from me.  I haven't got my brackets
>on."

>       "Calm yourself, my dear," said our suave operator, "your fears are
>purely imaginary."

>       "I, I," she thought.  "Perhaps he's homogeneous then?"

>       "What order are you?" the brute demanded.

>       "Seventeen," replied Polly.

>       Curly leered.  "I suppose you've never been operated on yet?" he said.

>       "Of course not," Polly cried indignantly.  "I'm absolutely convergent."

>       "Come, come," said Curly.  "Let's off to a decimal place I know and
>I'll take you to the limit."

>       "Never!" gasped Polly.

>       "Exchlf!" he swore, using the vilest oath he knew.  His patience was
>gone. Coshing her over the coefficient with a log until she was powerless,
>Curly removed her discontinuities.  He stared at her significant places and
>began smoothing her points of inflection.  Poor Polly.  All was up.  She felt
>his hand tending to her asymptotic limit.  Her convergence would soon be gone
>for ever.

>       There was no mercy, for Curly was a heavyside operator.  He integrated
>by parts. He integrated by partial fractions.  The complex beast even went all
>the way around and did a contour integration.  What an indignity, to be
>multiply connected on her first integration.  Curly went on operating until he
>was absolutely and completely orthogonal.

>       When Polly got home that evening, her mother noticed that she had been
>truncated in several places.  But it was too late to differentiate now.  As the
>months went by, Polly increased monotonically.  Finally she generated a small
>but pathological function which left surds all over the place until she was
>driven to distraction.

>       The moral of our story is this:  If you want to keep your expressions
>convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom!

I suppose the poster of this bit of sexist garbage is sitting at his 
terminal quite smug in the knowledge that he has generated a controversial 
topic.  I AM NOT AMUSED.  It is offensive, has no business on the Celtic 
board--or any other board!  So-called "cute" postings that denigrate other 
races, the opposite sex, are NEVER in good taste.  As a writer, I try very 
hard not to put down anyone else, even if I don't happen to share their 
views.  You, sir, seem to enjoy the put down.  Suggest you confine your 
drivel amongst your comrades; perhaps they appreciate it more.
Suzanne who has spent far to many years trying to avoid the Neanderthal 
mentality evident by this poster. 
-----
suzanne@mailhub.scf.lmsc.lockheed.com