Firehose Class: 4 Color Theorem

This was probably the first part of CPW that I didn’t really enjoy, but was bearable because I was at it with Michelle and Sara. It was in some obscure part of MIT, in some little room at the top of a building. When we first walked in we saw, believe it or not, Ben Jones (an admissions blogger, the guy we were chanting at earlier)! We went up and said hi, he looked at us and said hi, and then we introduced ourselves. He looked at Sara and said “I recognize you, but I can’t remember your name.” Sara told him her name. He smiled and said nice to meet you. Then he looked at Michelle and said “again, I recognize you but I’m not getting a name.” Michelle told him and he smiled and said nice to meet you. Then he looks at me. I think I should take this opportunity to share a bit of the history of me and the MIT blogs. I love them. I read them all and comment all the time, so much so that the bloggers have started to mention me. I’ve e-mailed a bunch of them and am friends with them on facebook. Ben Jones absolutely knows who I am on the internet. He looks at me and says “And I don’t even recognize you, I don’t think we’ve ever met.” Sara laughs, Michelle snickers. I say “I’m Snively.” Ben’s mouth drops and his eyes got wide and he was like “SNIVELY! Nice to meet you! Finally!” lol, obviously people on the internet don’t look the same in person? Ben had to leave, but the class hadn’t started yet, so Sara played some piano for us, it was very good.



Anyway, back to the four color theorem class. Firehose classes are basically just really hard math at odd hours of the night. You don’t take notes or anything, you just listen. The four color theorem states that if you have a map of some type with bordering regions, that you need a maximum of 4 colors to color the regions so that no two regions of the same color touch. Simple concept. The lady that taught the proof was just really irritating though, I couldn’t stand her! Her voice, I don’t know, there was just something about it. Sara and I joked back and forth the whole time, and even managed to get a good nerdy Chuck Norris joke out of it.

Chuck Norris can make a utility graph planar.

At midnight we left, we just couldn’t take another 15 minutes of it.





We left and went outside, where we called the rest of our group and met up with them in Killian Court. Thus begins the midnight meanderings of the “Fab Five”.