56. Streams of Consciousness
1. If you think about one of the most prestigious accomplishments any country can boast of, consider the ability of taking people to outer space and back home safely, now try doing any of that without intense applications of mathematics.
2. If you like to watch modern movies, especially those that revolve around trash compacting robots, stories about toys and talking cars, then you like visual effects and if you like visual effects then you appreciate a great deal of applied math.
3. Nowadays, when you use the Internet, there are many reasons that demand the need for security and this encryption and protection of data is entirely based in mathematical formulas.
4. While there might be a thrill associated with playing the lottery, most give practically no chance for winning, for example the popular SuperEnalotto in Italy, requires the player to match
6 numbers out of a possible 90, the odds for such a feat are about one in over 620 million.
5. Manhole covers are round, and the reason is that any other shape would allow the cover to fall through the hole at the right angle, with a circular design there is no such worry, and the circle is an efficient use of area.
6. There even exists a mathematical approach to finding your spouse, first determine the number of total likely partners you are to have, then divide that number by e, which is roughly 2.72, then after you have had that number of partners you should pick the next partner that exceeds all the partners up until that point, this gives you a 37% of picking your best mate, which is the highest certainty you can guarantee for yourself, according to this formula.
7. The Internet has been a wonderful place to try to solve big supercomputer type problems, for example the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) and the Search for Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) are using peoples normally idle computers to productive ends. This is an example of the “power in numbers” approach, using a distributed network to search for answers.
8. If you were an older, wealthy individual with no real heirs, would you be intrigued by the idea of cloning yourself so that you could bequeath your fortune to yourself? Even if you thoroughly object to this idea, would everybody? Given the increasingly widespread knowledge of cloning technologies and the distribution and prevalence of personal wealth, perhaps there is already a secret clone population that is alive and well and growing every day.
10. There are a fair number of artists that fall into the "nerdcore" realm, generally found in hip hop music but in other genres as well, and oftentimes they integrate math lingo into their rhymes, here are a few artists where you can find samples of original math metaphors: funky49, who moonlights as the rapper for Fermilab, YTCracker, who has already hacked the planet, twice, MC Plus+, who is a dedicated and full fledged computer scientist rapper, MC Hawking, whom the actual Stephen Hawking said of, “I am flattered, as it's a modern-day equivalent to Spitting Image”.