asymptotes

“ Then I knelt, too, and prayed: 'O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.'  ” - Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited “ I am assailed by the worst temptations of atheism. ” - St. Therese of Lisieux, from her diary “ Even the very wise cannot see all ends. ” - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings “ May the odds be ever in your favor. ” - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games First, a disclaimer. This essay will not directly tackle the question of whether or not God exists. The reader is referred to a more profound and entertaining discussion on this topic by Dr. Peter Kreeft , a popular contemporary philosopher and speaker. Instead, this essay will consider God’s existence from the point of view of chance and consequence. I shall begin by relating a personal experience. A year ago, I received a series of anti-rabies shots for a cat bite. I was peacefully relaxing in a beach hut when I accidentally stepped on a c...

Fermat's Last Theorem (FLT) is perhaps the most famous mathematical puzzle of all time. It was formulated as a conjecture by Pierre de Fermat in 1637 and was only proven in 1995 by Andrew Wiles. FLT states that no three positive integers  a ,  b , and  c  can satisfy the equation  a n  +  b n  =  c n    [1] for any integer value of  n  greater than 2. A very interesting fact about FLT is how Fermat introduced it to the world. He wrote the following on the margin of the book Arithmetica : I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. This margin is too narrow to contain it. With this seemingly casual and yet bold statement, Fermat issued a challenge to the great mathematical minds of his time (which included Blaise Pascal) and of the three cen...