What Is E? A Tale Of Mathematical Trauma

The mathematical setup of "Let n ∈ ℕ" (let n be a natural number) followed by a forest photoshoot is peak mathematician humor. It's literally saying "n: nature" - a pun on the mathematical notation where n is being defined as... well, nature itself. The forest scene is the visual definition of n. This is what happens when mathematicians try to be funny outside the classroom and honestly, it works. The kind of joke that makes you groan and appreciate simultaneously.

The classic case of mathematical hubris meets basic integration. Student thinks they're outsmarting the professor by taking a different approach to find f(x) when given f'(x) = 2x. Instead of recognizing this as a straightforward x² + C situation, they perform some creative calculus gymnastics, invert the function, and somehow conclude f(x) = -1/x². The professor's "WTF???" and "Idiot" annotations are basically peer review in its rawest form. Nothing humbles a self-proclaimed math genius faster than discovering the fundamental theorem of calculus actually works.

Oh, the glorious statistical wordplay! The top graph shows a perfect bell curve (normal distribution) centered at zero—what society thinks "mean" (average) people are attracted to. But add that little "a" and BOOM! The bottom graph shows what "mean" people actually prefer: a bimodal distribution skewed toward negative values with a tiny bump in the positive region! It's basically saying jerks prefer other jerks or occasional saints, completely rejecting the middle ground. Statistical humor that makes mathematicians snort coffee through their noses!

Ever notice how calculus textbooks present Taylor series like it's some elegant mathematical truth? Meanwhile, every student who's ever tried to actually use it knows the horror. You start with a nice, compact function and end up with an infinite sum that's supposed to be "equivalent" but requires calculating derivatives until your calculator begs for mercy. And convergence? That's just a theoretical concept to make you feel better while you're approximating with three terms and praying the error isn't catastrophic. The secret Big Calculus doesn't want you to know: most mathematicians just use computers for this stuff and laugh at the rest of us scribbling factorial denominators.

The ultimate battle of logical reasoning! On the left, mathematical induction shows off with its domino effect—proving something works for all numbers by showing it works for one case and then proving each step leads to the next. Meanwhile, science induction is just a white pigeon confidently declaring "all ravens are black." Congratulations, you've discovered the whitest counterexample possible! This perfectly captures why scientists need more than just "I've seen it a bunch of times, must be universal law." Next up: discovering gravity doesn't exist because I once saw a helium balloon float upward.

Behold Gregor Mendel, the OG genetics chad who flexed so hard on 19th-century science! While everyone else was scratching their heads about inheritance, this monk was out there crossing pea plants and dropping statistical heat. His revolutionary ratio work (3:1 dominant-recessive, anyone?) was so ahead of its time that nobody appreciated it until 16 years after his death. Talk about posthumous gains! The ultimate scientific gigachad who didn't even need peer validation—just quietly revolutionized biology while tending his garden and refusing to elaborate further. His papers were literally gathering dust while Darwin was wondering how traits passed down. Absolute unit of scientific history!