The Cinderella Theorem Read online

  This equation is the one I always use to think about my family. I suppose the “1 father” would have been a part of it at some point, but in my mind he’s never been there. He died in a train wreck two days before I was born.

  [2] Read x as “times.” See? Math is fun!

  [3] If I seem a little slow to understand what my mom is telling me, keep in mind that fifteen years of believing my dad is dead is greater than 3 minutes of hearing he is alive. (15 > 3.)

  [4] Statistics = Math done to prove something.

  [5] But, now that I’ve gotten my father back from the dead, I guess this will rank as the best. Obviously, a not-dead father is a much better gift than a box of memories about him.

  [6] Color descriptions in the mathematical world are simpler. To me, the marble is blue. To my author mother, the marble is blue, the color of the sky after hearing that the king of the land has fallen in love, or some other strange description that has nothing to do with colors or marbles.

  [7] The kids at school usually wasted their time playing non-mathematical games like Chase the Cute Boy, Dodgeball, or Tag. Based on what I’ve seen in math tutoring, they would have better spent their time at marbles with its emphasis on geometry and probability.

  [8] Here is a list her reasons there are no pictures of my father:

  1. A random car fire ruined her camera.

  2. His parents were against the marriage, so they had a very quick and simple wedding, with no photographer.

  3. Her parents were against the marriage, so they had a very quick and simple wedding with no photographer.

  4. They dated only a short time, so there weren’t many opportunities for pictures.

  5. They were just so in love that they never bothered with taking pictures.

  [9] You know what area is, right? Area is simply the size of a surface. The formula is area = length x width.

  [10] Trig is, according to my mother, the worst math class ever. I haven’t officially taken it yet, but I bought an old college trig book at a second hand book shop. I had fun going through it. It’s mostly about triangles and angles and who doesn’t like that?

  [11] Smythe is pronounced “Smith.” Apparently, Smythe is just a fancy “Smith.”

  [12] Anagram = a word, phrase, or jumble of letters, that when rearranged make another word or phrase. An anagram of “pots” is “stop.” “Mary” is “army.” “Astronomer” is “Moon starer.” Specifically, by rearranging the letters in “fairy tales, myths, legends,” the name “E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire land” is created.

  [13]This is called standard normal distribution. It is especially useful in analyzing the data related to tests, battery life, and coin flipping.

  [14] Fights at school = normal. Normal = well… normal.

  [15] y = mx + b, where m = slope, and b is the y-intercept.

  [16] My mom continues to believe that I know a great deal about fairy tales and other legendary literature. She thinks all those fairy tale collections and mythological compendiums that she keeps buying for me have, by the process of osmosis, seeped into my brain merely by being in my room.

  [17] I think being in a fairy tale land subtracts some of the distractedness of my mother. Of course, speaking quickly and abandoning me in the middle of a strange land is a form of distraction, but consider the amount of detail she used in her instructions. It’s quite uncharacteristic for her. I mean, she included two specific times, one plan for a meal, and two clothing plans.

  2 + 1 + 2 = 5 specific things.

  [18] I am using sarcasm here.

  [19] Honestly…it was a small fire on the floor. The area damaged hardly equated the “forsaking of personal safety.”

  [20] I’m not sure what the painting was of. It was too hard to see.

  [21] Amphi confused me. She wasn’t a frog and she seemed genuinely shocked that her ball made of gold–a metal–didn’t float.

  [22] Why are there so many dangerous things in fairy tales? Poisoned apples, dragons, witches, wolves, giants, ogres, trolls, not to mention magical curses. Should stories for children be so full of danger?

  [23] Even impending danger couldn’t stop me from noticing math.

  [24] Assumption: Idiot highly classified balcony boy’s name is Calo.

  Opinion: Calo is a stupid name.

  Fact: I usually avoid opinions, because

  Fact (the second): they are not mathematical.

  However, exception: Making opinions about idiot Calo seems to be a justifiable behavior and (the last)

  Exception: it’s fun.

  [25] iff is the abbreviation for “if and only if.” It’s used in logic and philosophy. Here’s a piece of math trivia that I’ve told Mom at least four times: iff first appeared in John L. Kelley’s book General Topology (which is a math classic), but Paul Halmos is often credited with inventing it.

  [26] Pi is a Greek letter. It looks like this: π. It is used in math to represent the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. (Circumference = the distance around the edge of the circle; Diameter = a straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle.) There is no end to pi. It is an irrational number and can’t be expressed as a common fraction. When you write it as a decimal, the numbers never end, and there’s never a clear pattern to them. It approximately equals 3.14159, but the first 100 digits are 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679 …. Also, some people (cool math people) celebrate Pi day on March 14th. March 14th =3/14, which is the beginning of pi, 3.14. And by celebrate, I mean make math jokes and eat pie with a π on it.

  [27] And, unmathematically, this reason is the most compelling of the five to me.

  [28] Mean is a math term that basically means (Ha! Puny!) “average.”

  [29] HEA is pronounced [hee-ah].

  [30] Exploration of vanishing results = rising level of happiness.

  [31]

  x = 3x + 3(x – 5)

  x = 3x + 3x – 15

  x = 6x – 15

  x + 15 = 6x

  15 = 6x – x

  15 = 5x

  3 = x

  [32] ride to HEA = enjoyment

  ride to HEA + Calo (in any form) = the opposite of enjoyment

  [33] Mom now = mother + wife + (famous)writer + distracted – widow – cook.

  [34] The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

  [35] “My lady,” I’ve noticed, is an excellent cover for all titles. If you’re not sure if you are addressing a queen or a princess–throw on a “my lady.” It’s respectful, if a bit vague.

  [36] The hold this place has on me is certainly not mathematical. Maybe, like Mom says, it’s in my blood.

  [37] Oddly, though, Atlantis seemed to be under the water, but I suppose that could just be a cartography mistake. How could a city be underwater?

  [38] These questions can be answered with probability. Calo said that she almost always knows. That implies (at the very least) some failure. By setting her knowledge of Levi incidents at 90%, I can further determine the likelihood of her and Calo knowing about it. But for this equation, I must consider more data.

  (a) Calo loves to make me feel inferior. If he knew about additional Levi incidents, I think he would let me know all about how I’m threatening security.

  (b) The way my father reacted after the first Levi incident. If Kara and the Agency thought I was being threatened, they would have to tell the King his daughter was in danger. I think I would have noticed a rise in parental concern.

  Since I have not observed a or b, I conclude that the Agency does not know about Levi harassing me, or if it does know, it hasn’t told anyone.

  Probability of Agency knowing: 10%

  Probability of Calo knowing: 2%

  Probability of my parents knowing, 1%

  [39] A Venn diagram is used to sort things into categories. In the math world, we call this elementary set theory. To make a Venn diagram, draw two circles. They should pa
rtially overlap each other. Now add your data. Let’s say we are sorting fairy tales with evil step-mothers and fairy tales with fairy godmothers. Stories that only had an evil step-mother, would go in Circle A. Stories with only a fairy godmother would go in Circle B. But where would you put a story that had both an evil step-mother and a fairy godmother? That story would go in the overlapping middle part.

  My mom belongs to both my circle and my father’s circle. So having her overlap us keeps things from getting too awkward.

  [40] Imagine an eternity where my pencil always broke just before I solved a complex algebra problem or being forced to write wrong answers to simple calculations or listening to children chanting incorrect multiplication tables.

  [41] Pretzels are a great mathematical snack. You can estimate how many you’ll grab out of the bag, use the mini ones as counters, or the sticks to form numbers and equations.

  [42] I considered asking my father which solution he thought most likely, but decided that wouldn’t be smart. This is another example of what is wrong and abnormal about my life. A daughter, should be able to tell her father that she thinks an intruder may have entered her room. But I am not so fortunate. I am afraid my father will:

  (1) finally make good on his threat to kill Levi,

  (2) declare war on Uppish Senna,

  and/or (3) take the file folder away from me.

  [43] Pronounced [see-ah] not [see]. I know it doesn’t make sense but it’s supposed to rhyme with HEA [hee-ah].

  [44] I had found a plastic one at my house. Plastic book bags equal more protection for your belongings against random, emotionally charged, fairy-tale-land rain. I certainly didn’t want the Candlemaker’s Daughter file to get wet.

  [45] I hope no one has ever tried to make a mailbox out of a difficult word to rhyme–like orange or month.

  [46] Strange, I know. But after about 24 conversations with my mom had ended with her in tears, saying, “They’re just dead, Lily! Let’s not talk about it,” I realized there was no more forthcoming information. A good mathematician knows when something has become futile, like trying to make 2 and 2 equal 5.

  [47] And the probability is pretty high since she is a proven liar. Of course, a strict examination of the facts proves me to be a liar also. Like mother, like daughter. But let’s not follow that line of thinking…

  [48] Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally = PEMDAS = order of operations = Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.

  [49]

  x - 1(4-x) = 20

  x - 4x + x = 20

  x + x = 24

  2x =24

  x = 12

  [50] Having never experimented with skipping school, running seemed appropriate. Besides, I was in a hurry.

  [51] I’m beginning to see a pattern (of short, cryptic notes) forming.

  [52] I know. Not a shining example of fire safety. When I mentioned this to Calo, he told me not to worry about it, that in the case of a fire, all the citizens inside would be transported to safety. Now, how illogical is that? Trusting magical forces for your safety. The magic didn’t transport everyone to the fireproof room when Naga was attacking the castle. Shouldn’t that protocol be in place?

  [53] I still have trouble understanding how Happiness can be measured; I’m not ready to understand why it needs a high frequency.

  [54] I realize, mathematically speaking, Levi wasn’t actually kidnapping me. I had volunteered to be kidnapped, but being blindfolded was the variable pushing me toward a kidnapping equation.

  [55] In case you, like me, wondered what a “dais” is: it’s a raised platform, often for dignified occupancy. It’s a fancy quest clause way of saying “a little stage.”

  [56] 12 prisoners + Lily = 13 prisoners – freed prisoner = 12 prisoners.

  [57] I suppose the quest clause enabled me to know what a sampler was.

  [58] So glad I don’t have to talk to those birds.

  [59] Lily and Calo’s rescue plan – Calo = one big mess of unhappiness.

  [60] That was a super mathematical day, let me tell you. (Read the previous sentence with sarcasm.)

  [61] They gave a copy to the court historian who keeps up with the chronicles of each ruler. I was a little disturbed to find out that everything I’d done would be written down and retold for generations. Maybe it was a good thing I’d enacted the quest clause for at least part of it.

  Table of Contents

  copyright

  1 Pretzels and The Box

  2 Lubcker

  3 Marvelous Midas Creme

  4 Pretzels…. Again

  5 Keys

  6 Arrivhall, of Course

  7 Prime Number Presentation

  8 The Trellis and the Tango

  9 Is Everybody Happy?

  10 The Mirror and the Mail

  11 Chocolate Chip Cookies

  12 Objects in Motion

  13 The Dream

  14 Everyone Vanishes

  15 The Importance of Lamplight

  16 Don’t Eat Dulcita’s Mirror

  17 A Big Mess of Worry

  18 Everyone Vanishes

  19 The Origins of Evil Levi

  20 The Quest Clause

  21 Everyone is Sad

  22 This is a Rescue

  23 And They All Lived Happily Ever After

  Epilogue

  sneak peak of Lily’s next adventure, Calculating Christmas.