expansion and reflection on the bell curve

expansion and reflection on the bell curve

fiction
edward w pritchard

Ibn was going to sit in his garden and read. The garden was surrounded on four sides by the walls of the house and various gazebos and was a pleasant place to sit and read. The walled garden was inspired by the Alhambra in Granada Spain and was expensively decorated with understated fine marble statues and tiled fountains. The sound of running and cascading water provided a backdrop and muted sunlight filtered through the trees to provide shade and light.

First Ibn's daughter ran out to tell him goodbye. She jumped on his lap and kissed him and gave him a sweet piece of pastry she had saved for him from her lunch. She and her Mother were going to his mother-in laws for the day and she wanted to tell him she would bring him back some cherries. After she left there were some troubling details of business with his business associate who worked for him and spent 10 or twelve hours a day at his home. Today him and his business associate had started early and he finally was able to drive his associate away. Today was their half-day and IBN wanted to read and reflect. Future business dis-quietations would have to wait until tomorrow.

Today Ibn was going to read two books and compare the authors ideas on an interesting phenomena. The first book by Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German, expanded on the work of the Frenchman Abraham de Moivre. The books concerned the bell curve and normal distribution.

Two hours later a screeching bird interrupted Ibn from a deep revelry. He was thinking about the implications of the bell curve and had taken a pen and a sketch pad and had drawn a point [dot] of ink at each end. Directly below he had drawn the normal bell curve as discussed by Gauss in the folded book sitting on the ground near Ibn.

Ibn often reflected in this manner and was known to spend his entire afternoon off on some similar sort of reflections, for he longed to understand things ethereal and timeless. Today the two points at the end of the bell curve had set him to thinking about the relationship between man and God. He carefully drew six dots across a large piece of paper and then with a colored ink drew the connecting bell curves.

He said aloud " man turns into God/ who turns into man /who turns into God /who turns into man/ who turns into God/" what if it would continue? man who turns into God/ who turns into Man/ who turns into God

Ibn carefully took the paper he had been working on and folded it in half upon itself. He now was thinking non-linearly. Ibn moved the first dot and the last dot and lined them up until they would touch except for the thickness of the paper separating them.

Ibn's daughter raced into his garden and jumped in his lap. " Daddy have you been sitting here drawing the whole time". Here are your cherries. Ibn's wife came in. She said his business partner was back and had to see him.

Ibn rose and took his daughter's hand and went to see his business associate. He lost his train of thought about the dots and the paper. Later the screeching bird swooped down and took the paper with the dots to add to the nest she was building.
end