Recent breakthroughs in the Mathematics department have led to the discovery of a new number, one that scientists are calling “the Silly Number.” The discovery is credited to Shasta Cordoba, a graduate student in Dr. Munroe’s group theory research lab. Cordoba is the vice president of UCSB’s Women in Mathematics organization, and board member of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). This previously unknown number is described as “a non-zero integer between -1 and 1.” But how exactly can such a number exist? In this exclusive interview with the madam herself, Cordoba has the deets!

We met up with Ms. Cordoba at a local IV cafe. It was a calm, cozy afternoon with just a few other customers nearby. She had politely declined any beverages our crew offered to buy her, and she sat with dignified, feminine grace upon a barstool.

So, like, what’s the big deal about your discovery? Where did it all start?

“Imagine the number line you learned in elementary school, okay. You’d expect it to look something like -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 , 3, and so on. Seems normal right? Everything looks good. There’s negative integers on the left, positive integers on the right, and zero is in the middle. What we’ve discovered suggests that… this order is not correct. We’ve got it all wrong.” 

Wow, so your research has proven hundreds of old white men wrong! It’s about time a woman was celebrated for her work in the field of mathematics. What an amazing and impactful discovery! Tell us, what even is the Silly Number? 

“The Silly Number is not some kind of decimal or fraction like 0.5. And it’s not zero either. It’s not even irrational, like pi or Euler’s number. It can’t be represented as a series. It doesn’t have a negative version of itself. It possesses extremely unusual properties that no other structure in mathematics has.” Cordoba appeared slightly unsettled while explaining the Silly Number’s properties. Her eyes wandered around the room, as if she were looking for something.

Properties of the Silly Number (provided by the now-defunct Monroe research group):

• Integer
• Lies in the range (-1, 1), exact location indeterminate
• ¿ ≠ 0
• Identity property of addition (zero-like)
  • n + ¿ = n
  • ¿ + ¿ = ¿
• Identity property of multiplication (one-like)
  • n¿ = n
  • ¿¿ = ¿
  • ¿ⁿ = ¿
• Exponent property (negative-one-like)
  • n^¿ = 1/n
  • ¿^¿ = 1/¿ = ¿

Sounds like this number isn’t afraid to be itself in a world of conformity. #SLAYYYY! Where did the name come from?

Her gaze stopped for a moment, focused on some nondescript point on the wall. “We’re currently denoting it with an upside-down question mark, but this feeble attempt to distill its true nature into a simple representational pictograph is laughable. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. It’s… silly.” She turned her head down to look at her clasped hands resting on the table.

You know, women in STEM throughout history have often been regarded as “silly,” “emotional,” and “unfit for science,” but you sure are proving the haters wrong. How will this impact the field of mathematics?

“This has severe implications for the fundamentals of all mathematics as we know it. All of our understanding of math stems from the concept of ordered whole numbers. There’s… there’s supposed to be the same amount of them on either side of zero. The fact that there’s one that we haven’t accounted for is catastrophic. We can no longer say with confidence that the correct order of numbers is 0, 1, 2, 3. How? How could we have missed it? Everything humanity has worked on for… thousands of years. It’s all wrong.”

What real-world applications does the Silly Number have?

“That’s the absurdity of this whole thing, isn’t it. How can I have a Silly amount of something?” She unclasped her hands, and pointed her palms upward as if she were holding some large object. “Integers were invented by humans to count things like livestock, money, and physical things they observed in the world. Whoever first recorded these numbers must have… miscounted. Maybe early humans were missing something that modern humans now possess. Have we reached such a level of universal understanding that we’ve encountered something that wasn’t meant to be discovered? Did God or some other power intentionally hide this number from us? Why reveal it now? Why did it take so long to uncover the truth? I have asked myself these questions every day since the discovery, and I still don’t have the answers. It haunts me.”

Now Ms. Cordoba’s hands were clenched into fists. She looked up, gaze fixed back onto the wall. “That’s not even the end of it,” she said quietly. “After our research group proved the existence of the Silly Number, we were mostly still in denial. But as we double-checked and triple-checked, it became more apparent that there were no flaws in the proof. That’s when the gravity of the situation started to set in. People were losing their minds. The truth of the Silly Number led many of my colleagues to begin convulsing, sputtering out ancient Latin phrases damning humanity to a death beyond Lovecraftian degree. ‘Numerus stultus venit,’ they all kept yelling over and over… We were all ripping our hair out, people were sobbing on the linoleum floor, someone tried to burn the blackboard to destroy the evidence. But we had all seen it by then. The Silly Number was already in our minds. I couldn’t forget it if I tried, and trust me, I have.”

Cordoba’s testimony was noticeably increasing in tempo, her words coming out at a frantic pace. As she gripped onto the table, she continued, “Dr. Monroe called his wife, told her he loved her, and walked out of the building at 9:20 PM. No one has seen him since. A handful of us stayed up all night and attempted to re-derive the set of all integers as a sanity check, b-but we didn’t end up with ℤ. We ended up with an entirely new set. It contains several other integers that we haven’t seen before. W-we’re calling it the Silly Set, of which ℤ is a subset, but… Oh god I– I can’t go on, it’s too horrible.”

Cordoba covered her face, a quiet sob escaping from her lips. She appeared visibly choked up at this point during the interview. It’s touching to see just how passionate she is about her work. A true girlboss in action! 

After our team shuffled awkwardly for a moment, we got her a glass of water from the barista, who also appeared concerned. Cordoba continued shakily, “The few of us that remained in the lab room afterward… well, we didn’t know what to do. The Silly Number was already out of our hands. People had gone home already. They’d already texted their loved ones and posted it on social media. One by one, they all started to lose their grip on reality. I… I’m the only one left… to continue the work…”

Cordoba paused for a moment, taking a sip from the trembling glass. “Frank released a manifesto yesterday. It’s become a cognitohazard. The military is already involved, they’ve got me on every watchlist in the western hemisphere. There’s going to be a massive, violent, silly revolution in the coming months. There will be upheaval and brimstone. People have already died in the east coast riots. The only reason I agreed to do this interview is to warn people of what’s coming.”

Woah there Shasta, isn’t that a little dark? 

The other customers in the cafe had begun to glance over at us nervously. One couple stood up to leave in a hurry.

Let’s move onto something a little more inspirational. How has being a Latinx womxn in STEM affected your research? Do you have any words of encouragement for young, aspiring scientists like yourself?

“…What?” 

Like, have you faced any unfair discrimination, or has your culture and heritage encouraged and uplifted you? 

Cordoba suddenly stood up from her seat, making eye contact with us for the first time. Her voice now very confident, she exclaimed “I’m talking about widespread and unavoidable chaos, complete and utter carnage is imminent! Libraries will be burned, governments will be overthrown, databases and servers will be wiped! We are on the verge of extinction, the likes of which have never been seen before! Humanity will never be the same, this is a pivotal moment in history!! We were fucking doomed from the start!!!” 

We went ahead and cut the interview short here as Ms. Cordoba then began to emit a high-pitched shriek rendering all of our recording equipment unusable, and which left several of our journalists with permanent hearing damage. Let us know in the comments below if you’d like to see a Part 2! Thanks to Shasta Cordoba and the rest of the team for this amazing look into the life of a Latinx womxn in STEM. Follow us for more quality journalism at gauchomarks.com and @gaucho.marks on Instagram!