My officemate at work today was shocked to learn that I was an applied math major in college. I don’t know why this was shocking, especially since I had brought it up before, but I suppose that things like rings and residues rarely come up when you’re writing code for a software company.
I remember struggling through real analysis with all of its abstract concepts and terminology. Even though I took almost nothing away from that class, since it’s so inapplicable to the real world, I recall the part about topology, with the open and closed sets and all that. I don’t remember all the details, of course, but I do remember that a set that’s both open and closed is called a clopen set. Which I thought was a funny but cute word.
But apparently, Hitler reacted more angrily to the term than I did.
I laugh every time I see this video.