How to Tell a Mathematician You Love Them
Ten Valentine's declarations, one per branch of math: divergent series, hyperbolic parallels, topological invariants, the null hypothesis, a binomial coefficient, a global optimum, a biconditional and a prime.
Use this cartoon
Free for classrooms, worksheets, slides and other non-commercial use under CC BY-NC 4.0, with credit to Ben Orlin.
Cartoon by Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings. https://cartoons.mathwithbaddrawings.com/2017-02-08-how-to-tell-a-mathematician-you-love-them/ (CC BY-NC 4.0)Transcript
[1] Analyst: "My feelings for you fail every test of convergence." [hearts + hearts + shrinking hearts…]
[2] Hyperbolic Geometer: "A line has many parallels, but you have none."
[3] Topologist: "Through all life's diffeomorphisms, my affection for you is invariant." [a heart deforming]
[4] Statistician: "A single moment with you is evidence enough to reject the null hypothesis." "But… is n=1 enough?" "Is the 1 you? It's exactly the n I want!"
[5] Graph Theory: "My heart is a node with a thousand arcs, all of them leading to you."
[6] Combinatorist: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…" [(I choose you)] "Aww! You choose me?"
[7] Probabilist: "To call you 'one in a million' would sell you short. You're a probability-zero event." [two dice with hearts]
[8] Operations Research: "Call off the search algorithm; I've found my global optimum." [a heart at the highest peak of a wavy graph]
[9] Logician: "My love is more than unconditional. It's biconditional." "I love X iff X is you."
[10] Number Theorist: "You and I must sum to a prime, because what we have together is indivisible."