mathNEWS Issue 90.5: Friday, November 15, 2002

Temptation

Have you ever done something that you knew was wrong but did it anyway because you couldn't resist the temptation to do it? Have you kept thinking of a hot guy/girl you met in the morning when you already had a girl/boyfriend? Have you ever spent the only dollars you had for dinner on something you liked but was totally useless and starved for the rest of the day? Have you, simply because you couldn't resist the temptation to do so?

Similar situations have even happened in calculus class when I was tempted to write an apostrophe after "diff" (it would look like the derivative of function f), the short form for "differentiable" because it's so much more descriptive than a plain "diff" and would avoid being mixed up with other words like "different" or "difficult". I have been doing so for every "diff" I write down and have gained tremendous happiness in doing this. So the conclusion is that it may be a good idea not to resist the temptation, when the happiness you gain largely excels the consequences you suffer. After all, temptation is not always a bad thing.

diff' Cong



Copyright © 1998 mathNEWS.