The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Page B
Authors: Mark Haddon
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that there was a heron which came and ate lots of the frogs (sometimes there is a heron who comes and tries to eat the frogs, but there is chicken wire over the pond to stop it).
But sometimes it has nothing to do with cold winters or cats or herons. Sometimes it is just maths.
Here is a formula for a population of animals
N new = λ (N old ) (1 – N old )
And in this formula N stands for the population density. When N = 1 the population is the biggest it can get. And when N = 0 the population is extinct. N new is the population in one year, and N old is the population in the year before. And λ is what is called a constant.
When λ is less than 1, the population gets smaller and smaller and goes extinct. And when λ is between 1 and 3, the population gets bigger and then it stays stable like this (and these graphs are hypothetical, too)
And when λ is between 3 and 3.57 the population goes in cycles like this
But when λ is greater than 3.57 the population becomes chaotic like in the first graph.
This was discovered by Robert May and George Oster and Jim Yorke. And it means that sometimes things are so complicated that it is impossible to predict what they are going to do next, but they are only obeying really simple rules.
And it means that sometimes a whole population of frogs, or worms, or people, can die for no reason whatsoever, just because that is the way the numbers work.
157. It was six days before I could go back into Father's room to look in the shirt box in the cupboard.
On the first day, which was a Wednesday, Joseph Fleming took his trousers off and went to the toilet all over the floor of the changing room and started to eat it, but Mr. Davis stopped him.
Joseph eats everything. He once ate one of the little blocks of blue disinfectant which hang inside the toilets. And he once ate a £50 note from his mother's wallet. And he eats string and rubber bands and tissues and writing paper and paints and plastic forks. Also he bangs his chin and screams a lot.
Tyrone said that there was a horse and a pig in the poo, so I said he was being stupid, but Siobhan said he wasn't. They were small plastic animals from the library that the staff use to make people tell stories. And Joseph had eaten them.
So I said I wasn't going to go into the toilets because there was poo on the floor and it made me feel uncomfortable to think about it, even though Mr. Ennison had come in and cleaned it up. And I wet my trousers and I had to put on some spare ones from the spare clothes locker in Mrs. Gascoyne's room. So Siobhan said I could use the staff room toilets for two days, but only two days, and then I would have to use the children's toilets again. And we made this a deal.
On the second, third and fourth days, which were Thursday, Friday and Saturday, nothing interesting happened.
On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
I went upstairs and sat in my room and watched the water falling in the street. It was falling so hard that it looked like white sparks (and this is a simile, too, not a metaphor). And there was no one around because everyone was staying indoors. And it made me think how all the water in the world was connected, and this water had evaporated from the oceans somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico or Baffin Bay, and now it was falling in front of the house and it would drain away into the gutters and flow to a sewage station where it would be cleaned and then it would go into a river and go back into the ocean again.
And in the evening on Monday Father got a phone call from a lady whose cellar had flooded and he had to go out and fix it in an emergency.
If there is only one emergency Rhodri goes and fixes it because his wife and his children went to live in Somerset, which means he doesn't have anything to do in the evenings apart from playing snooker and drinking
But sometimes it has nothing to do with cold winters or cats or herons. Sometimes it is just maths.
Here is a formula for a population of animals
N new = λ (N old ) (1 – N old )
And in this formula N stands for the population density. When N = 1 the population is the biggest it can get. And when N = 0 the population is extinct. N new is the population in one year, and N old is the population in the year before. And λ is what is called a constant.
When λ is less than 1, the population gets smaller and smaller and goes extinct. And when λ is between 1 and 3, the population gets bigger and then it stays stable like this (and these graphs are hypothetical, too)
And when λ is between 3 and 3.57 the population goes in cycles like this
But when λ is greater than 3.57 the population becomes chaotic like in the first graph.
This was discovered by Robert May and George Oster and Jim Yorke. And it means that sometimes things are so complicated that it is impossible to predict what they are going to do next, but they are only obeying really simple rules.
And it means that sometimes a whole population of frogs, or worms, or people, can die for no reason whatsoever, just because that is the way the numbers work.
157. It was six days before I could go back into Father's room to look in the shirt box in the cupboard.
On the first day, which was a Wednesday, Joseph Fleming took his trousers off and went to the toilet all over the floor of the changing room and started to eat it, but Mr. Davis stopped him.
Joseph eats everything. He once ate one of the little blocks of blue disinfectant which hang inside the toilets. And he once ate a £50 note from his mother's wallet. And he eats string and rubber bands and tissues and writing paper and paints and plastic forks. Also he bangs his chin and screams a lot.
Tyrone said that there was a horse and a pig in the poo, so I said he was being stupid, but Siobhan said he wasn't. They were small plastic animals from the library that the staff use to make people tell stories. And Joseph had eaten them.
So I said I wasn't going to go into the toilets because there was poo on the floor and it made me feel uncomfortable to think about it, even though Mr. Ennison had come in and cleaned it up. And I wet my trousers and I had to put on some spare ones from the spare clothes locker in Mrs. Gascoyne's room. So Siobhan said I could use the staff room toilets for two days, but only two days, and then I would have to use the children's toilets again. And we made this a deal.
On the second, third and fourth days, which were Thursday, Friday and Saturday, nothing interesting happened.
On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
I went upstairs and sat in my room and watched the water falling in the street. It was falling so hard that it looked like white sparks (and this is a simile, too, not a metaphor). And there was no one around because everyone was staying indoors. And it made me think how all the water in the world was connected, and this water had evaporated from the oceans somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico or Baffin Bay, and now it was falling in front of the house and it would drain away into the gutters and flow to a sewage station where it would be cleaned and then it would go into a river and go back into the ocean again.
And in the evening on Monday Father got a phone call from a lady whose cellar had flooded and he had to go out and fix it in an emergency.
If there is only one emergency Rhodri goes and fixes it because his wife and his children went to live in Somerset, which means he doesn't have anything to do in the evenings apart from playing snooker and drinking
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