My Proposal For Factorial-Inverse Notation

Our brains are hilariously bad at grasping large numbers. Spider-Man's contemplative pose perfectly captures that moment when your mind is utterly blown by numerical reality. Think about it—a thousand seconds is just 16.7 minutes, but a million seconds is 11 days, and a billion seconds is 31.5 YEARS! That's why billionaires should make us way more uncomfortable than they do. Next time someone says "I'll be back in a billion seconds," you should probably find new friends who'll be alive when you're 90.

The existential crisis of every physics student, captured by a cat who clearly didn't sign up for electromagnetic field theory. That feline silhouette staring at partial differential equations is the perfect metaphor for my entire academic career. Nothing says "I've made terrible life choices" quite like a cat contemplating Maxwell's equations at 3 AM while questioning whether happiness was ever an option. The universe is vast and mysterious, but not nearly as mysterious as why we voluntarily torture ourselves with vector calculus when we could be napping in sunbeams.

Factorial of zero equals one: the mathematical statement that makes both programmers and mathematicians look up with equal disdain. While programmers have to code special cases for it, mathematicians must explain why multiplying zero factors somehow equals one instead of zero. Meanwhile, the monstrous factorial function looms over them both, delighting in their shared suffering. The empty product is watching... always watching.

The coding trauma is REAL! This programmer just committed the cardinal sin of starting an array index at 1 instead of 0 in front of the wrong crowd. In programming, arrays traditionally start at index 0 (a convention most coders treat as sacred law), but MATLAB users start at 1. It's like announcing you put milk before cereal at a breakfast enthusiast convention. The MATLAB logo in the corner is the chef's kiss of this disaster - showing exactly which programming environment led to this social catastrophe. Now this poor soul is experiencing the social equivalent of a runtime error!

The ultimate mathematical flex isn't money or status—it's casually dropping "proof left as an exercise to the reader" and walking away like you didn't just commit emotional damage. Mathematicians have been traumatizing students with this power move for centuries. Nothing says "I'm intellectually superior" quite like implying a proof is so trivial it's not worth your precious chalk. Meanwhile, students everywhere are frantically scribbling at 2 AM, questioning their life choices and wondering if "obvious" means something entirely different in math-speak.

When Fermat said "All Fermat numbers are prime!" Euler basically said "Hold my quill pen" and factored 4,294,967,297 into 641 × 6,700,417... by hand . 🤯 Fermat numbers (2 2 n + 1) were thought to be prime for all values, but Euler crushed that dream with pure mathematical wizardry. He didn't need a calculator, supercomputer, or even electricity—just his brain and possibly an unhealthy obsession with large numbers. Meanwhile, I struggle to calculate a 15% tip without my phone. This is why mathematicians are the original flex masters of history!