The connection between Mathematics and Street Fighter

Yesterday, I acquired what looked like an interesting book, “Foundations of Real and Abstract Analysis”.

The first few pages of chapter 1 were perfectly fine. Fields, unary and binary operators, limits, sets...

Ah makes sense.
Yes, yes. Brilliant expression.
That’s new; I didn’t know that.

Then Section 2 of Chapter 1 came up with a mass of utterly unfamiliar material. Crap. Good thing mathworld.com has a search engine.

The sensation is somewhat like playing a perverse game of Street Fighter.

You seem to be doing rather ok, doing damage faster than you are receiving it. The round appears to be in the bag. The life bars at the top of the screen seem to indicate that you have the advantage.

Then opponent pulls something unethical out of the bag. Equivalent to 3 Cold War era hydrogen fusion bombs, he executes the ultimate move when you least suspect it; the opponent’s Ken goes into an autopilot sequence. A mass of kicks to the head and knee levels are flung out, and finished off with a jumping helicopter kick. The end result: a massive 11-hit combo, and a dead self.

Turns out you have neglected to check the power meters at the bottom of the screen.

Turns out I did not see that the book was from a series “Graduate Texts in Mathematics”, the difficulty being marked by ‘graduate’. Yes, it was right there at the top of the front cover printed in large, friendly letters.

Enough blogging; back to my essay preparation. There’s a Human Resources Management essay due on Monday morning at 9.00am, length of 2500 words, worth 25%. I have yet to make any substantial advances.

On a more positive note, it’s perfectly doable. Pamela is living proof:

I can do my assignments (and NOT fail them) in one nite.. hahahahaz.. This is not something to be proud of but I know many ppl who will die of stress and high blood pressure if they attempt to squeeze out 3500 words in one nite..

End note:
Adrian recently got hold of an emulator that had Street Fighter Alpha 3 in it. I keep getting trashed, by Ken.


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