hovering. “I’ll have the, er, magret de canard , please.” My French accent was execrable.
“ L’entrecote, s’il vous plaît .” Unsurprisingly, his French was perfect. “My mother was a French teacher,” he explained. “So, you were saying—about your art?”
“I paint,” I explained, as enthusiastically as I could. “I’ve been trying a lot of different themes and media, actually, but nothing seems to stick. I was painting animal skeletons for a while, and I went through this sports phase—soccer balls, and four-square balls, and golf balls, all balanced on each other. But they were kind of hard to paint, and I’m not much good at perspective, and the balls kept rolling away so I could never get the correspondences right. So anyhow, I’m doing portraits, mostly, these days . . . of made-up people doing ridiculous things, like riding bicycles upside down. But it’s hard to paint imaginary people. They always go sort of funny . . .” I trailed off.
“You sound very talented,” George assured me.
“Well, thanks,” I demurred. “I don’t know about that. But what about you—what excites you about statistics?”
“That’s a great question,” he said, as if responding to an enthusiastic student. I felt the absurd happiness that comes from saying the right thing. “You might be surprised to hear that there’s plenty of room for creativity in my field, too.”
“Really.” I leaned forward. “Tell me.”
“Just imagine taking your life and quantifying it. Thinking about how many times, say, you crossed a particular street this week. And say I counted all the times I crossed that same street this week. What if I crossed that street, every time, just minutes before you came by? We could graph our respective trajectories. And we would see how our lives, all this week, almost intersected. We took something that seemed random, and gave it meaning. Then, you could go further. It’s like the odds of dice coming up a certain number. It’s possible to roll six sixes in a row. And it’s possible for the paths of two people who almost met a number of times to finally intersect. It’s all based on probability.”
I nodded. “That’s cool. My brain doesn’t work like that. I wish it did. Thinking in that way must be like reading maps—just looking at something and all of a sudden the correspondences appear. I’m terrible at reading maps too. They’re all squiggly lines going in impossible directions. I keep looking at the shapes the lines form, like cloud pictures, and not making the least sense out of the map’s purpose, you know?”
“That’s because you’re an artist. You think differently than I do. I’d love to find out how your mind works, how you come up with your ideas. Reading maps—don’t worry about it. I’ll read them for you.” I blushed, feeling overly praised. I didn’t feel I’d done much lately to be commended about.
“It’s neat also,” I said shyly, “to think that maybe what you said is true—maybe you and I have been just missing each other for years, and then we just met up, just like that. Our trajectories crossed, that one time.”
“Some call it fate,” said George. “I call it science.”
I thought about that for a bit. “You’re right,” I said slowly. “Fate—that’s just a bunch of crap. I just can’t stand those couples who are all ‘We’re meant to be together. When we met it was fate .’ Whatever! Deluded!” I caught myself. “Well. What’s Pasadena like?” I asked sweetly. “I haven’t been there yet.”
“Pasadena is the city all cities should aspire to,” George said loftily. “It’s clean. It’s pretty. It’s safe.” He enumerated the virtues on his fingers. “Wide streets. Well-preserved Craftsman bungalows everywhere you look. It is civilized. I would have loved to live there and be closer to the university, but it’s important to my mother that I live near her, in case of emergency. She’s getting
“ L’entrecote, s’il vous plaît .” Unsurprisingly, his French was perfect. “My mother was a French teacher,” he explained. “So, you were saying—about your art?”
“I paint,” I explained, as enthusiastically as I could. “I’ve been trying a lot of different themes and media, actually, but nothing seems to stick. I was painting animal skeletons for a while, and I went through this sports phase—soccer balls, and four-square balls, and golf balls, all balanced on each other. But they were kind of hard to paint, and I’m not much good at perspective, and the balls kept rolling away so I could never get the correspondences right. So anyhow, I’m doing portraits, mostly, these days . . . of made-up people doing ridiculous things, like riding bicycles upside down. But it’s hard to paint imaginary people. They always go sort of funny . . .” I trailed off.
“You sound very talented,” George assured me.
“Well, thanks,” I demurred. “I don’t know about that. But what about you—what excites you about statistics?”
“That’s a great question,” he said, as if responding to an enthusiastic student. I felt the absurd happiness that comes from saying the right thing. “You might be surprised to hear that there’s plenty of room for creativity in my field, too.”
“Really.” I leaned forward. “Tell me.”
“Just imagine taking your life and quantifying it. Thinking about how many times, say, you crossed a particular street this week. And say I counted all the times I crossed that same street this week. What if I crossed that street, every time, just minutes before you came by? We could graph our respective trajectories. And we would see how our lives, all this week, almost intersected. We took something that seemed random, and gave it meaning. Then, you could go further. It’s like the odds of dice coming up a certain number. It’s possible to roll six sixes in a row. And it’s possible for the paths of two people who almost met a number of times to finally intersect. It’s all based on probability.”
I nodded. “That’s cool. My brain doesn’t work like that. I wish it did. Thinking in that way must be like reading maps—just looking at something and all of a sudden the correspondences appear. I’m terrible at reading maps too. They’re all squiggly lines going in impossible directions. I keep looking at the shapes the lines form, like cloud pictures, and not making the least sense out of the map’s purpose, you know?”
“That’s because you’re an artist. You think differently than I do. I’d love to find out how your mind works, how you come up with your ideas. Reading maps—don’t worry about it. I’ll read them for you.” I blushed, feeling overly praised. I didn’t feel I’d done much lately to be commended about.
“It’s neat also,” I said shyly, “to think that maybe what you said is true—maybe you and I have been just missing each other for years, and then we just met up, just like that. Our trajectories crossed, that one time.”
“Some call it fate,” said George. “I call it science.”
I thought about that for a bit. “You’re right,” I said slowly. “Fate—that’s just a bunch of crap. I just can’t stand those couples who are all ‘We’re meant to be together. When we met it was fate .’ Whatever! Deluded!” I caught myself. “Well. What’s Pasadena like?” I asked sweetly. “I haven’t been there yet.”
“Pasadena is the city all cities should aspire to,” George said loftily. “It’s clean. It’s pretty. It’s safe.” He enumerated the virtues on his fingers. “Wide streets. Well-preserved Craftsman bungalows everywhere you look. It is civilized. I would have loved to live there and be closer to the university, but it’s important to my mother that I live near her, in case of emergency. She’s getting
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