August 13th

8/13/24

The key to a successful bargain is not wanting the product. Even if you do, you don’t. See a thing, like it, set an upper limit. Make sure it’s reasonable. Go to the person selling it and just plainly present what you like. Then, after they tell you how much it is, tell them your upper limit. Thank them when and if they succumb.

I saw an outdoor thrift store somewhere in Manhattan. I didn’t expect to like anything, but I ended up liking two skirts - a pink and a floral number. A white top too. All three of which were realistically worth 20 dollars. The lady selling them, Riza, told me the top was 35, the pink skirt was 30, and the floral was 40. Atrocious, but I didn’t say that to Riza. I told her I’ll take both skirts for 50. She countered with 55. I stared at the pink skirt. “Let me think about it,” I said. Took 3 minutes. I told her I’d just do the floral for 30. She succumbed and told me to take both for 50. Then she took a picture of me for their instagram story - they do this for all customers, I wasn’t special (although still flattered).

I never thought I could bargain. I grew up seeing my mom and grandmother bargain in India, which looked like the vendor saying 50 and them insulting the vendor, saying that his eggplant is rotten (edit: I chose the wrong example vegetable) and thus is worth 5. I liked when the vendors hit back with the “ok don’t buy it then.” But almost every time, my mother figures got a good deal. I never understood how. But I guess I’m learning.

Elderberry stems are toxic. I guess the berries are too, I don’t know. So you have very limited options of what to do with elderberries. I made a syrup, which took two hours to cook down and left me with, let’s see, a tablespoon.

I’ve tried explaining recursion to exactly three people in my life and failed every single time to convey how absolutely mind-blowing it is. What I love the most about it is that it’s a mathematical concept about trust. You have to blindly trust so many moving parts - it breaks your brain if you try to understand how it works. And yet it works. It’s the closest thing to witchcraft I’ve seen in math.

All I will do is try to explain it the way I learned it - through the Fibonacci problem.

The Fibonacci sequence is named after a dude. He was Italian. In the sequence, each number is a sum of the two preceding ones: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, etc. etc. Hopefully you see it.

We want to write an algorithm that gives us the nth Fibonacci number. That is, we want to tell the program, hey give me the 6th Fibonacci number, and it’s supposed to give us 8. Similarly we can say give us the 2nd number, and it’s supposed to give us 1.

We solve this problem through recursion. Here’s the outline of a recursive solution courtesy CS 10 slides:

• Base case(s)
• What’s the simplest or smallest case?
• Recursive case
• Divide the problem into smaller parts.
• Invoke the function on each part (recursively).
• Combine parts into a total solution.

                def Fibonacci(n):
                    if n <= 0:
                        print("Incorrect input")
                    # First Fibonacci number is 0
                    elif n == 1:
                        return 0
                    # Second Fibonacci number is 1
                    elif n == 2:
                        return 1
                    else:
                        return Fibonacci(n-1) + Fibonacci(n-2)