# What It Means To Be A Math Major

Primarily, it means I just can not believe these people who go out memorizing the value of $e$ — the base of the natural logarithm — to only five places after the decimal point. I mean, come on, the second through fifth digits are repeated in the sixth through ninth positions! If you’ve bothered to memorize the first five digits past the decimal point then you’ve got the first nine down. Why deny yourself the free fruits of your mental labors? And don’t go telling me that it’s because you memorized it in base two or base sixteen or one of those silly other bases absolutely nobody needs. If we were talking about memorizing the value of $e$ in base twelve then we wouldn’t have talked about the decimal point, would we? We’d be talking about the radix point. Sheesh.

Secondarily, it means I believe in the existence of people who’ve memorized the value of $e$ to a mere five places past the decimal point.

## Author: Joseph Nebus

I was born 198 years to the day after Johnny Appleseed. The differences between us do not end there. He/him.

## 4 thoughts on “What It Means To Be A Math Major”

1. The lack of drive in the younger generation of mathematicians will spell the downfall of mathematics. Are they even motivated enough to spell “the downfall of mathematics” anyway? Absolutely disappointing.

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1. Well, spelling “the downfall of mathematics” is more an English project anyway. Not my problem.

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1. Oh, too bad. You know there’s a wonderful new hyperdimensional geometric construct which makes the mathematics of quantum field theory much more tractable and might even beat the renormalization problem. You bailed out too soon!

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