In his article in the New York Time's, author Alec Wilkinson explores the implications of what it means to do what you love -- what makes it beautiful to you. He takes an interesting stance on a topic which has been discussed for years; exploring its implication on a truly different level. For his own article, he explores the idea of "beauty" through mathematics. He reveals to the audience that he had "only passed high school math because he cheated" -- an effective method to bring readers to a closer level to his narration. In doing so, he then explains the significance of a man he met through his daughter who was nothing short of mathematical genius, successfully solving an equation which had remained unsolved for over 20 years. This transitions him to the idea of number theory, a branch of pure mathematics that truly and completely serves no purpose whatsoever. What it did provide people who were involved, however, was a complete satisfaction in the use of numbers sequences. He ties it back to the the mathematician aforementioned, Ytang Zhang, in how his had particularly felt after solving the equation. He described it as an "exile from this dreary world", something that "he was passionate about, without completely understanding why".
All of which lead Wilkinson to his ultimate conclusion regarding beauty. It ultimately is in the eye of the beholder and it is ultimately how it makes one feel that indicates its true beauty. The fact that the author utilized the idea of solving math problems to describe the ambiguity of beauty is extremely effective. After all, for many, and obviously for the author himself, the idea of solving math problems is the last thing that would be considered beautiful.
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