The numbers never lie...

I love mathematics. I walk around all day doing math problems in my head. I calculate my miles to the gallon while driving. I run my bank balance in my head, and am cognizant of each purchase and can tell you what my new balance is, although that's not too tough when you're at zero. I look at structures or lines on the sidewalk and do geometry. I look at angles. I memorize numbers. I would've been a great numbers runner. I store all sorts of useless facts in my brain. I commit license plates to memory. If I dial a phone number, its pretty much locked in. I don't really have to write it down. My cell phone is determined to allow early-onset alzheimers set in, not letting my neurons fire away, making one-touch dialing by name possible. I look at hexagonal patterns in a tile floor and wonder how many of them it will take to cover an area of 40 square feet if each side of the hexagon is 4 inches long. And sometimes I count backward from numbers like 136,706 in hopes that I'll fall asleep before I get to zero.

Numbers never lie, except when they do. A guy can average 20 points and 10 rebounds per game but never touch the ball in the last 5 minutes of a game because he chokes under the pressure, when a 12 points per game scorer could be dying to take the last shot. Your 40 million dollar man can hit homeruns almost at will, but a glove in his hand is about as useful as a Louis Vuitton purse in the outfield while the guy on the 10-day free agent contract from Triple-A Tacoma is a born winner that will give up his body and run through the wall if it means he'll catch the ball and his team's victory is preserved. Which guy do you want on your team?

I love numbers anyway. Interpreters of these numbers often leave something to be desired, but we keep them around anyway. ESPN, my perpetual background noise, throws useless numbers around all day. Gallup polls tell us what's hot and what's not. How's this for a statistic? At least one of my entries per week will leave you wondering what the heck I'm talking about. Another still might make you think that not since somebody decided to make a math problem about the flight pattern of the common housefly, has anyone embraced randomness as thoroughly as have I.