Times awkward math analogies of this time period

Because we haven't done this in a while, and because I still love rock & roll:

...imagine a rubber band stretched around an apple or a doughnut; on the apple, the rubber band can be shrunk without limit, but on the doughnut it is stopped by the hole.


Applied mathematically to this metric, the Ricci flow acts like heat, flowing through the space in question, smoothing and straightening all its bumps and curves to reveal its essential shape, the way a hair dryer shrink-wraps plastic.


All I need to know about topology I learned from Scotter.

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