You Might be a Mathematician if …

• hypergeometric summations are the most fun you can have with your clothes on;
• at the age of 19 your most productive years are behind you;
• your major result will be named for someone else;
• your fame lies in posing the question you can’t answer;
• you make mistakes … but they are really interesting mistakes;
• you wonder how Euler pronounced “Euclid”;
• you understand all the mathematics Gauss produced … through age 13;
• a copy of Russel’s letter to Frege adorns your wall;
• your major was Mathematics, minor Caffeine;
• you know all of the Greek alphabet, but not a word of Greek;
• You can recite Pretty Poly Nomial and Curly Pi from memory;
• your correspondence has footnotes and bibliography;
• irresistible little combinatorics puzzles keep appearing like a nervous tic;
• unemployment is a welcome opportunity to make progress on your life’s work.
• your progeny are relieved to learn that Mathematics is not a heritable genetic trait;
• the solution to every problem involves counting balls into boxes;
• you cannot refrain from blurting out counterexamples when someone claims an impossibility;
• you can fold planar strips into regular polyhedra … entirely in your head;
• doing something more than once is boring;
• you suffer dental and gum disease because brushing teeth is boring;
• because of your dental problems, mention of the word “calculus” raises mixed emotions;
• you celebrate Rota’s birthday decadently with donuts and champagne in paper cups;
• you celebrate Erdös’s birthday furtively with Benzedrine chased by a double espresso;
• it is difficult to plan for retirement given the current state of the continuum hypothesis;
• you remember postal addresses by means of number theory: “The smallest integer which is the sum of two cubes in two different ways”;
• you have calculated how many ways (ignoring reflections) there are of lacing your sneaker;
• you count on your fingers in binary;
• your romantic relationship is strained when you show too much interest in your beloved’s mathematician acquaintances;
• you have already obtained your next three years of reading material;
• you know a six-letter word with three vowels, all of which are “y”;
• you learned French so you could read Bourbaki;
• you bring Bourbaki’s Varietes Differentielles Analytiques Fascicule de Resultats on vacation;
• you don’t bother taking vacations when you can read Bourbaki at home;
• you visit Earth primarily for lectures and family obligations;
• your opinion of A Beautiful Mind is “been there; done that.”