A One-to-One conversation

You may or may not be surprised at how many people do not understand basic mathematical concepts. Today, I'm going to help you understand one of them.

A function is a relation for which each value from the set of the first components of the ordered pairs(domain) is associated with exactly one value from the set of second components of the ordered pairs(range).

When I give students the definition, some of the eyes start to glaze over. Others have an idea of X's and Y's being matched up, but they haven't rigorously tested that idea. And that's where the real mathematics lies. It's in thinking deeply about mathematical concepts and.... trying to violate the hell out of them if you can within the parameters you set up.

The definition of a function may seem straightforward, but they are various cases you have to deal with to really understand the concept and go beyond the notion of just pairing X's and Y's together all willy-nilly.

I'm going to give you an alternate definition and then humanize it for you.

A function is a special type of relation where every x-value has exactly one y-value.

Now let's humanize it.

Let X represent the female and let Y represent the male as it does in biology.

So the above says,

A functional relation(ship) is a special type of relation(ship) where every woman has only one man.

So let's consider some scenarios:

Let's say we have 3 women: Celine, Jenna, and Kira. We also have 3 guys: Tony, Daniel, and James.

If they go out on a triple date, it might look like this:

Celine -----> Tony

Jenna ------> Daniel

Kira. ------> James

This is what people think of when they think of a function if they can conceptualize it at all. This is what's called a one-to-one function. This is how most women see the relationship between baby mamas and baby daddies i.e. for each unique baby mama there must be a unique baby daddy. This would be a functional setup.

Scenario 2: Let's say Tony is richer and more handsome than the other two. All 3 women would be attracted to him and date him. It would look like this:

Celine ___

\

Jenna -------- Tony

Kira. _____/

Is this functional?

Let's go back to the definition:

A function is a special type of relation(ship) where every woman has only one man.

Does Celine only have one man?

Yes.

Does Jenna only have one man?

Yes.

Does Kira only have one man?

Yes.

It so happens that they are dating the same man, but the definition holds. Throughout history, men have had multiple women and wives. This is also functional. It's also the case least understood by women because they almost always fail to understand how there can be more baby mamas than baby daddies because they only can see the first scenario. But anyone with an above room temperature IQ has seen the second case everywhere. In the case above, we would end up with 3 baby mamas to only one baby daddy. Extend this out through the population and the disparity is both easy to see and explain.

Finally, what if we have a case where Kira, Jenna and Celine date all 3 guys and more simultaneously. Well, that's where we get our hot girl summers and h0 phases.

Let's go back to the definition.

Does Celine only have one man?

No.

Does Jenna only have one man?

No.

Does Kira only have one man?

No.

This would be dysfunctional. It doesn't work. And those who endorse it have the worst outcomes. I say all of the above to say the following: Mathematically speaking, these h0es are dysfunctional and out of pocket.