mathNEWS Issue 90.5: Friday, November 15, 2002

Math Food

If Math were a food, it would be a Banana. Since if Math were an animal and it were a gorilla, if Math were a food, it would have to be a Banana, because that's what they eat. Like Bananas, Math can be hard to get into, although if you understand how it works, you can get into both easily. Bananas are squishy on the inside, but hard on the outside, and the hard outside can be deceiving of how squishy the inside is. That's just like Math and the fact that it looks hard from the outside, but it is actually easy on the inside.

A Banana is a fruit that's good for you, just like Math is. Once I saw a Banana freak out and kill an entire town because one kid said, "Math sucks." If you try to get into a Banana really hard, but have trouble doing so, you may mush up the insides and ruin it for yourself. Just like in Math if you're having trouble with something and you try too hard, you'll wreck your enthusiasm to do the Math, and you will no longer like what it has in store. There are several ways to get into a Banana just like there are several ways to get into Math. You can peel a Banana gradually, or just mash out the insides in one fell swoop, just like you can get into Math step by step, or just try everything and not understand anything and never want to do Math ever again.

A Banana is also like Math because it's shaped like a parabola. If you took the derivative of an equation and its highest exponent was even, you'd know you'd be drawing a veritable Banana on your page. Bananas also remind me of π, because a famous type of pie is Banana cream pie. I'm sure you could train gorillas to make Banana cream pies as well. Bananas give potassium, which you need to do Math, because it makes your body work. Since many, many things in the world have parabolas in them, and Bananas are shaped like parabolas, Bananas must be Math. Smart people eat Bananas because they know they're eating Math. After all, Einstein may or may not have had a Banana tree.

CosmicFiend



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