Why Eggs and Anchovies?

 Be warned: if you are looking for meaning here, there is none. Here we go. 

As I make sense of post-graduate life, I thought a blog might be a good opportunity to practice writing while also trying to hone in on my brand of mathematics. I'm not entirely convinced, but hey, maybe it'll grow on me. Whatever the path to this point was, I am now faced with my first challenge: What should my blog name be? 

Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev (1821–1894)

My work thus far has been revolving around orthogonal polynomials [OPs], and so I thought a title like "Tea and OPs," or something with orthogonality, but that was pretty on-the-nose. Instead, I should try to look for a deeper and less obvious name. I took to the interweb, looking for something that fit the bill. About two seconds later Chebyshev (naturally) crossed my mind. Was it Chebyshev? Or is it Tchebycheff? Tchebychev? Tschebyscheff? There are a few more, but you get the point. I actually don't know the answer.

This isn't necessarily a new hot take: name in different language has a few different spellings when anglicized (said Ahmed, Ahmad, and/or Akhmed). The more important fact, which I had completely forgotten, was that Chebyshev's full name is Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev. At this stage I'd entirely forgotten about the objective and decided to read more about Chebyshev's name, which is precisely when I ran into The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn by mathematician Philip Davis. 

The book contains a chapter titled "Pafnuty," where the author goes down their own rabbit hole to try and figure out the origins of the name Pafnuty. It's an intriguing story, and certainly worth a look, but is not where I'm going with this. In the story, the following line appears:

            "I was stopped cold and things stood that way for five years. Then suddenly, quite unexpectedly, I picked up a thread, and the Tschebyscheff file was reopened"

which immediately reminded me of my initial goal: finding a name for my blog! Never mind that, there are only a couple of pages left to the chapter. Better see this thing through. A few sentences later, I stumbled upon this excellent line

            "Saturday morning I sat down in front of a fine dish of eggs and anchovies."

Eggs and Anchovies. Eggs and Anchovies. I don't know why (after all, what is a good title?), but this was it. So, I present to you, 

            Eggs and Anchovies. It may smell, but it is a fine way to begin your day. 

The astute reader will have already asked "what exactly is this nonsense about?" Fair question. The thing is, "I'm practicing how to write" isn't really what I had in mind. Sure, that is a thing that will occur when I write more, but is that really why I'm doing it? As I let this weird and seemingly unproductive morning carry me from one Google search to the next, I realized that a lot of good has happened when I let these coffee-induced, procrastination-sponsored Google rampages takeover my mornings. I learned interesting things, often about things I really like, and a blog is a great way to document my experience. Even more importantly, it is so fun!

Hi, welcome to my blog. Have an egg. Or an anchovy, I guess. You were warned.