The social life of a graph theorist.

Math 1 Minute

Once upon a time, there was a graph theorist. She was surrounded by loving friends, but did not always know how to express her affection.

"Hey, I really value our bidirected arc. I mean, uh, our friendship."
“Not to get too intimate, but for so much of my life, the outdegree of my affections has far exceeded the indegree.”

Sometimes her love of graph theory made it hard to empathize with others, who seemed to lack awareness of even the simplest properties of degree structure.

"It's not fair. All my Facebook friends have more Facebook friends than I do." "You want to live in a 200-regular social graph? That sounds like... some kind of communist dystopia... which I guess is cool..."
“More frustratingly, the papers I cite always have more citations than my own papers.”

And sometimes she tried to fuss with concrete examples so that they’d better exhibit neat theoretical properties.

This is a great habit for mathematicians.

It is not a great habit for friends.

"Why won't you answer my texts?! WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME." "It's nothing personal; I just don't want to ruin the whole Eulerian graph."
“According to Braess’s paradox, if friendly banter begins to flow between you and me, it could actually lower the speed of banter transmission in our friend group, by inducing additional banter. I can’t let that happen.”

But soon she learned that by teaching graph theory, she could help heighten the connectivity of her own social graph.

She found this very rewarding.

"Professor, what's a 'complete' graph?" "A world where 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' is very easy to play."
“Or, as I like to call it, ‘one degree of whoever the hell you want.'”

Eventually, she found a home among people who spoke her language and appreciated her quirky way of seeing their social fabric.

And they all lived happily asymptotically after.

"Hey, what's your Erdos number?" "Six." "Ha. That's not very impressive." "Not until you realize that Erdos's *me* number is *also* six." "But isn't that tauto..." "Totally cool? Yes. Yes it is."
“Actually, the word ‘tautological’ is just an abbreviation of ‘totally logical, and thus, a valuable contribution to the discourse; thank you for making that astute point.'”
Published

5 thoughts on “The social life of a graph theorist.”

  1. Pingback: September 2024 (with bad drawings). – Math with Bad Drawings
  2. Pingback: September 2024 (with bad drawings). - Programação Com Analogia

  3. Caminando por Algeciras vi un anuncio en una marquesina y decidí registrarme desde el teléfono por pura curiosidad. Antes no me iba nada bien y pensaba que este tipo de entretenimiento no era para mí, pero las cosas dieron un vuelco. Entré en roulettino y me centré en las máquinas durante un buen rato. Mi suerte cambió de golpe cuando saqué un premio grande. Pude recuperar mi capital inicial y ganar lo suficiente para estar satisfecho hoy mismo.

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  4. Thank you for sharing such an original piece—it reminded me that mathematics isn’t just about formulas, but also about seeing the world through a unique <a href=”https://slopeio.org

    “>slope</a> and playful lens. I found myself smiling all the way to the asymptotically happy ending.

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  5. I really enjoyed reading this! As someone who appreciates both mathematics and good storytelling, I think you did a fantastic job of turning graph theory into something genuinely funny and relatable.

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