I remember in 10th grade when I was really getting into math, I started noticing that my way of thinking was

really changing. I was looking at things not for their inner beauty or philosophical meaning, but for their geometric and numeric properties, which I still maintain have a huge amount of beauty in themselves. But as my thinking and reasoning developed with my passion for math, so did my speech. I remember once when I was out at a mall with friends talking about some hypothetical situation, Id say something like Well if I tell you to do X and you do Y, and Y is totally contradictory to X, then yeah Id be pretty peeved. To which my friends inevitably would reply: Tyler, why are you talking like that? Or maybe Id be trying to give advice:

It got to the point where I had to consciously stop myself from speaking that way, even though it felt totally natural. My observations stopped being things like: Gosh, I wonder how many drinks shes had!

And started becoming I wonder what itd look like if I plotted a function of her Blood Alcohol Level over time. I guess itd have a negative slope that would spike up whenever she had a drink

It turned out I wasnt alone in having my interests invade my speech. I was talking to my teacher at the time, and he said that when he was with his volleyball team, hed do similar things. Listen, if theyre only 1 point ahead, you shouldnt panic. If theyre 2 points ahead, then dont panic. But if they get N points ahead, it may be time to kick it into overdrive. While were on the subject of math and language, I remember one time in English class, the textbook said something like language and culture can vary greatly as a function of time. At that moment I felt a sort of camaraderie that transcended time and space between me and the obviously mathematically-minded author of my English textbook. Its not just symbols of concepts like A, B, , or that are dispersing themselves into my speech. Mathematical vocabulary has made it in there, too. Although I have to admit, it has made me sound a lot more intelligent than I actually am. I think if we just divide the price of the main course, and individually pay for our extraneous items itd be optimal.

I love how math nerds have their own language that seems to be just ours. It seems to alienate nonmathematical people. I think that may be the reason that the proportion of nerds to non-nerds in my set of friends (there I go again!) has grown substantially over this year. Another, less amusing side effect of Math Speech Syndrome is the fact that Im no longer willing to make universal truth claims. I mean obviously, if theres even a single exception, then what Im saying isnt true. So instead of saying Kittens are adorable Ill say Kittens are generally adorable. I mean, am I willing to believe that the set of not-cute cats is really empty? Out of the millions of young cats that have roamed the earth, have they all been cute?

The best part is, of course, the jokes. My favourite: A mathematician walks into a restaurant complaining to his physicist friend about how bad the public is at math. As he goes to the bathroom, the physicist whispers to a waitress: Im going to ask you a question in a moment. When you hear it, just reply one third x cubed. The waitress agrees, and the mathematician comes out of the bathroom. The physicist says People arent so bad at math. Watch. He turns to the waitress. Miss? Whats the integral of x squared? She goes one third x cubed. The mathematician is bewildered and his friend is smiling knowingly until the waitress continues plus a constant! In the end, its because math is more than just a set of symbols and theorems and techniques that we use to measure and quantify the world. To those like me, its a way of life. I can no longer think hard about something without trying to consider the underlying mathematical causes behind it. Combined with physics, I feel like everything in the world is a sort of manifestation of mathematical and scientific truth. I just cant imagine looking at the world really emotionally like other people seem to do, or through pure religion anymore. For better or worse, math has not just changed the way I talk but it has also changed the way I am..