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Story of Algebra

I wish academic writing was more fun. I'll give you a story of algebra.

This is the story of Alex. She wants to know where she came from. Alex grew up an orphan. She didn't know her biological parents. Now that she's older, she wants to find them. She wants to know why they abandoned her at such a young age.

This story is a story of identity. What is the essence of a person? Why is it important for us to trace our ancestry? Why do categories exist? Why does it matter at all?

What if she's "divergent" and doesn't belong to any existing tribes? Does something like that exist in mathematics--like an amalgam of identities?

To figure out where she came from, Alex is gonna ask the help of mathematicians like Galois.

See? That wasn't so hard. And now I'm intrigued.

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