Mathematical Overdose

Maybe it's the fact that I'm taking four math-intensive courses. Or maybe because of the particularly large dose of work received this past week. But whatever the case, I found the following incident that occurred to me quite disturbing.

I was just sitting down at my desk to perform some work on my laptop (Dell Latitude to be precise), when a small sticky note caught my attention. It read "847-6123" [numbers randomly changed to protect privacy]. Clearly it was a phone number sans area code. However, for some odd reason I read it as 847 minus 6123. Yeah, you read that right, I viewed a phone number as a mathematical equation.

Of course, it took me just a tad under a second to correct myself. But the sheer thought of it scared me. Is all this math getting to me?

Go figure.

(Photo Credit: Flickr user jesiehart)