In which a mathematical annoyance was revealed to me by Death Cab for Cutie.
So I had an enlightening morning. Driving home from my early skate, when the song long division by death cab comes on the rando playlist I had been listening to while rolling around. I was struck by how I'd never really noticed how the song was called long division and the chorus used the words "to be the remainder". My poor brain was then thrust back to my childhood, and how much I'd hated long division because remainders never made any sense, they just sort of stuck there and were shit numbers that didn't fit, for example:
This little fucker would end up looking like this:
And the 2 would be sitting there like being useless and leftover crap.
Then it struck me. There was meaning to this remainder, it had just never been explained to me.
THE REMAINDER CAN BE USED AS THE NUMERATOR FOR A FRACTION WITH THE DIVISOR AAA.
So you end up with this:
I have no idea why this wasn't explained to me 20 years ago (or why I didn't figure it out for myself in the meantime) but oh baby the closure.
Also now in my head "being the remainder" means you're over someone, because the remainder goes over that which has divided, which is pretty neat. Thanks, Death Cab for Cutie.