How Numerology Shaped My Eternal Destiny

A Riddle

Before jumping into my post, see if you can name the following figure:

A L U P
P U L A
L A P U
U P A L


Answer at the end of the post.

Numerology and Me

I loved the section on Numerology, even though most of it was a bit ridiculous. It makes it seem like the numerologist was behind Puff Daddy/P. Diddy's name change, though a quick Google search did not confirm this.

When Tammy and I were dating, she was teaching elementary school, and she did a math lesson where she had all the kids add up the letters of their names (A=1, B=2,... ,Z=26). So we decided to add up the letters in our names (first and middle names), and Alvin Cutler and Tammy Lynn both add up to the same number: 137. And that number is prime! (For those non-readers out there, a long section was devoted to prime numbers.) It's an obvious sign that we were meant to be together.

My roommate at the time was a computer science major, and after learning of our connection, he wrote a program to calculate numbers of different names. Then he fed the ward list from our singles ward through his program. His number didn't match any of the girls in our ward. Not surprisingly, he did not marry any of them.

Hopefully, your name/number matches that of your wife, but if not, I guess not all of us are lucky enough to marry our soul mates.


Short Thoughts

Did you know that the British title for the same book is Alex's Adventure in Numberland? I like the American title better.

I thought I understood the China-men puzzle when it was described in the book, but when you see it in action, it's much cooler.

I have never used or even seen a slide rule before, though I'd heard lots of old people use it as a reference for how old they are. Slide rules are really quite ingenious. And for as often as I use the log function in my work, I have to admit that I really didn't understand it very well before reading this book.

I have mixed feelings about an American getting credit for the original Sudoku puzzle because Sudoku is one of my least favorite kind of puzzle. They're very tedious.

The world is a big place with lots of people in it. If you search hard enough, you can find a cult following (and an ensuing competition) in anything. Abacus using championships, recognizing random sequences of 50 digits from pi, ability to multiply large numbers in your head, etc. Apparently you can also find people that literally don't have numbers in their vocabulary.

The first couple chapters I had to stop every couple of pages and tell Tammy what I was learning. I loved the history of numbers, explaining why we have 60 minutes in an hour, etc. It's amazing how such elementary mathematical concepts took the most brilliant minds in the world thousands of years to discover.

Overall, I thought the book was very interesting. I agree with an assessment Glenn sent me via email, "fascinating, fun, and frictional (it slows me down to the point where I have to stop reading and think)." Not a breezy read, but good nonetheless.

Riddle Answer

It's a Lattin Square!

Get it? A Latin square with Paul's name in it. Feel free to ROFL.