In my physics class, my teacher tells me to analyze my data points in order to linearize the function. He tells me to find a pattern in the points and to cube them, or take the square root, in order to plot the points in a straight line. If the graph isn't linear, he says, we can't understand what it represents. Our memories are like this too. In fact, every human is a mathematician of the memory, infatuated with the ideal of a linearized function-that every X has its own formula that contains it, that the events of our lives can be plotted in a straight line with constant slope. …
