I'm sulking because no one cares about the sheep urine bus.

Kidding.

I'm the only one here now. So no one will know if I go home early.

I have concocted a clever plan which relies upon this fact....

What I did to make it work, -t (like how I fold and spindle my sentence structure to avoid the hyphen at the beginning of the line?) is the following:

There's a bar vertically down the center which is 1 by x. There's another one horizontally which overlaps, so: x + x - x^2. Then you have the 4 triangle bits, each of which have a hypotenuse of x, so you could put them all together (hypotenuses out) to form a square of side x, so: 2x - x^2 + x^2 = 2x. So the only thing outside the octagon is four more little triangles which are exactly the same, so another x^2, and that fills out the original square, so: x^2 (outer triangles) + 2x (horizontal and vertical bars) = 1 (area of original square), so x^2 + 2x - 1 = 0.

More tangrams than geometry, but there you have it.

the urine bus disturbs me. moreso wondering why someone came up with the idea.

There's a bar vertically down the center which is 1 by x. There's another one horizontally which overlaps, so: x + x - x^2. Then you have the 4 triangle bits, each of which have a hypotenuse of x, so you could put them all together (hypotenuses out) to form a square of side x, so: 2x - x^2 + x^2 = 2x. So the only thing outside the octagon is four more little triangles which are exactly the same, so another x^2, and that fills out the original square, so: x^2 (outer triangles) + 2x (horizontal and vertical bars) = 1 (area of original square), so x^2 + 2x - 1 = 0.

That? Makes me want to run screaming. I don't know how you mathy types do it.

Sorry, everybody. I have about a month and a half to cover linear algebra, discrete math, trigonometry, and number theory, so that's pretty much my main focus (especially since I only have the rest of the month before I'm doing two clases as well).

I have about a month and a half to cover linear algebra, discrete math, trigonometry, and number theory

Oh, I think it's fascinating, don't get me wrong. Just that...if it was "Do that or equation or I'll kill you!" I'd be a very dead girl.

I'm not proud of it, but I am a math loser in every way.

That? Makes me want to run screaming. I don't know how you mathy types do it.

It only looks bad because I'm trying to type it. If I could draw it for you, it really wouldn't. I just fiddled with the pieces like a tangram.

tan(theta/pi), on the other hand... Well, I have trig fear. Save the arccotangents!

No, that's very elegant, Emily. Very nice. The kind of thing Euclid would do if he had Descartes to help him, really.

Now I feel like I should change my name so you don't have to jump through hoops to address me.

Now I feel like I should change my name so you don't have to jump through hoops to address me.

It's okay, it was kind of fun.

The kind of thing Euclid would do if he had Descartes to help him, really.

Except Euclid would say, "To apply to a line segment AB a parallelogram similar in area to a given rectilinear figure F and exceeding by a parallelogram similar to a given parallelogram" and I would throw my hands up in disgust and scare my cat.

Er, which is pretty much what happens at bedtime every night.