Of my earliest memories, I remember my father teaching me how to read, showing me magic tricks, and later giving me books on astronomy, along with a telescope. Later, at a book fair, I picked up a book on karate. It discussed martial arts but also discussed focusing the mind and explained that karate wasn’t just about karate--it was also about everything else. As the saying goes: how you do one thing is how you do everything. And later I developed an interest in music because my father was a musician. And so my father built and gifted me my first guitar. I found all of these things fascinating. And even more so in hindsight. I think these early experiences instilled in me many ideas. One of those ideas was a habit of looking at things as puzzles, mathematical tricks, patterns, contraptions, or games. Math, somewhat like magic, is a game of balancing or generalizing from numbers. Mathematics is a kind of sleight of hand--not to conceal, but to clarify. Like a magician who reveals wonder...