The OJ

As I was walking around campus the other day, I ran into my friend Robert E. Lee. (Yes, that’s his real name.)

I mentioned my new painting and the new unit of measurement that I wanted to introduce. Robert, being the mathematically gifted person he is, immediately saw a problem and then suggested a solution.

Let us suppose for the moment that a ‘cheap’ Van Gogh sells for around $4 Million. And suppose that it is 20” x 20”. Then it will be a 10,000J painting.

If I intend to trade up along the J scale, and if I trade up say 10J per painting, it will take me 1,000 trades to reach my goal. But surely that will take far too long.

What I need, Robert told me, is an exponential increase in the value of my trades. So I need another unit of measurement that will track that kind of increase. He suggested: 10 * log J.

If J = 10,000, then 10 * log J = 40. (For those who don’t remember this bit of math, logarithms track the number of zeros after a one in a number. So log 10 = 1; log 100 = 2; log 1000 = 3; and so on.) If I were to trade up by 2 of these new units per trade, I can reach my goal in twenty trades. And that, we both agreed, seems entirely reasonable.

So what to call this new unit? Well, exactly between ‘R’ and ‘L’ in the alphabet is the letter ‘O’. So in honor of Robert Lee, I will name the new unit of measurement: the OJ.

The OJ reveals an important fact about this project. 10 * log 1 J = 0. So, even though I have managed to trade up to a painting that equals 1 J, that painting has a value of 0 OJ. So on the scale I want to ascend, I have now really and truly just begun.

But will I be able to trade up along the OJ scale? That is the existentially pressing question that I now face. I have little doubt that I can continue to make incremental trades along the J scale. But to pull off this project I need to make incremental trades along the OJ scale.

Because I have only traded up to 0 OJ, however, I have zero evidence that I can do that.

And so, to put the point in somewhat dramatic philosophical language, I face an existentially angst-ridden moment: Will my next trades represent an increase in mere dollars, in J’s, or in OJ’s?

Only time will tell.

Of course, the Universe has helped me out before. So, why not ask again?

Universe:

I want someone to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones’ Dora Maar that represents an increase along the OJ scale.
I want someone to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones’ Dora Maar that represents an increase along the OJ scale.
I want someone to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones’ Dora Maar that represents an increase along the OJ scale.

If anyone has a painting to trade (especially if it is worth 1 or 2 OJ), let me know.