A Mathematical Twist to Relationships

A weird twist, isn't it? Maths gradually unfolds it's complexity to us from Kindergarten to Higher education and so do relationships, as they grow deeper by the years. Let us start with a basis to establish the similarity between the two and see how they proceed from basic level to calculus.

You enter a new class and there are so many students to interact with; as simple as counting Natural Numbers. After a month, some of them give negative vibes, some enter our positive books; hello to integers! Groups of like-minded people form just like sub-sets or Matrices. And then comes the quest for your crushes which marks the beginning of higher levels. You have your share of link-ups, 'Probabilities' of successfully wooing your heart-throb and not to mention the several cross-connections and on-off relationships happening within your class . And if you think that these 'Permutations and Combinations' are enough to make your heads spin, you are mistaken!

You are unsuspectingly dragged into an even crazier world. When you are friends with your crush, it is a simple 'a+b' situation. You start going around and in come the variables-ax+by, where x and y are likes of a and b respectively. But it is very simple to draw optimum solution at this point where there is a willingness from both a and b to 'çonstantly' showcase only the positives of their personalities and adjust the 'x and y's. When you get engaged, your negative aspects subtly start showing up in the form of 'cw+dz'...c and d being negative characters and w and z being dislikes. Still, they are simple enough to solve.

Marriage bombards you with endless polynomials, where the variables cropping up exhaust all the 26 alphabets, the symbols and the likes! It starts with where to settle, who cleans what blah blah blah...And so many angles from two families come into play that trigonometry blows out of proportion. The Linear Programming that was once resorted to in times of disagreements is utterly neglected.

Calculus ushers in, with the birth of your children where there is no 'Limit' for differences and 'Continuity' of bad habits within the family. Our behaviour affects their behaviour in a good/bad way; that is, an increment in 'x' brings about an increment in 'y'...Quite a 'Derivative' situation! And more the number of children we have, the more their behaviour is affected by us and their siblings...That brings in differential equations of first, second (and so on) order! We rack our brains to reach a solution for these uncontrollable series of differentials, just like Lagrange, Fourier and all did in their times.

Sometimes we let the equations run wild, sometimes we come up with a solution. And, this is how relationships throw us in a loop of derivatives and integration, forever!

Cheers!
Rati!