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Can you
identify the author of the following passage? The book? Write us at hubbard@matrixeditions.com with "math metaphors" as the subject. Or submit
your favorite literary passage involving mathematics.
We will
give the answer and post a new excerpt April 1.
New
Challenge
A
man, he would say, is like the number one while a woman is like a zero.
When they each live apart, his value is not great, and she has no value
at all, but when they enter into a marriage, then a certain new number
is created. If she is a good wife, she stands behind the one and
multiplies its strength tenfold. If she is a bad wife, then she
pushes her way in front of it and weakens the man by the same number of
times, reducing him to a mere tenth part of a whole.
Previous
challenge
...
it was not that that I hoped to find when I began to pry around in
Grandmother's life. I thought when I began, and still think, that
there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and
older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a
separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were
vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular
illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he
had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that
may indicate that at the absolute vanishing point they did
intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he
especially would ever admit.
Answer
This is from Angle of Repose, by William Stegner.
For
earlier challenges (and their answers), go to previous
challenges
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