i might go into a math-induced psychosis…

If any of you guys actually know me, then you know what I absolutely DESPISE more than anything else.

Euler’s Circuit.

It’s pretty much the most pointless thing that was created for something so simple.

So, basically, Euler’s Circuit was created on this belief in Königsberg—more like an unnecessary obsession: trying to walk across all seven bridges without crossing the same one twice. Everyone kept trying anyway—and, obviously, no one could do it.

So they brought in Leonhard Euler (pronounced “oiler” like a madman), who basically shut himself in a room in the city for several days to figure it out. Instead of actually walking the bridges like everyone else, he studied the layout and reduced it to simple connections.

After all that, his conclusion was pretty blunt: it’s impossible. Not complicated—just literally can’t be done.

This  took him several days. SEVERAL DAYS.

About a week and a half ago, we were given the task of trying to figure the bridges out without any prior knowledge aside from the theory of visiting each landmass (4) by using each bridge (7) exactly once. Within a minute of looking, I determined, “It’s an even number of landmasses and an odd number of bridges—in general and for each landmass. It’s incompatible.”

I was the first and only one in my class to figure it out, and the only one in all of her classes since she’s taught this to figure it out. Hurray for me, I guess.

In graph theory, an Eulerian trail is a trail in a finite graph that visits every edge exactly once. Similarly, an Eulerian circuit or Eulerian cycle is an Eulerian trail that starts and ends on the same vertex.

Well, I never thought it would ever come up in my life, and I genuinely hoped it wouldn’t because I hate it so much, but EULER IS HAUNTING ME FOR THE PURPOSE OF MAKING ME TWEAK OUT.

This Saturday, I was at the college I am going to in the coming year for a [school name] bound event where we met our possible teachers, friends, and roommates. I have yet to find a roommate, so I decided to go to the Student Housing Mixer (speed dating, but for friends and roommates).

I genuinely enter flow state and I was meeting some cool people I’d be happy to hang around when, all of a sudden, I hear this agitating, grating voice saying, “Somewhere, our rotations got mixed up, but go ahead and move to the right.”

The person in front of me moves, and I now have this fascinating gay guy in front of me. We start talking and basically becoming future side quest buddies, and then the voice speaks again, trying to audibly explain where we might have gone wrong.

I looked at the tables, counted how many people were to move and were to stay, then cursed Euler for all he’s worth.

I got some weird looks from the people around me and the guy in front of me, so I explained the overall situation along with how it played into our situation.

…

And no one knew what I was talking about, because it’s “not common math” and is therefore not taught in all schools… WHICH PROVES MY POINT OF HOW UNNECESSARY THE WHOLE THEORY AND THE GENERAL CREATION OF IT TRULY IS.