Chapter 40: "Welcome. Is this your first time with high school math?"
The back alleys of Florence were always a cocktail of sewer stench, cow dung, and the lingering, metallic tang of fresh blood.
Leo, a boy of about ten, spent his days scavenging through the trash in those filthy alleys.
People called him the "hopeless brat of Florence" or "that lowly orphan," pointing at him as he wandered barefoot in a tunic stained with grime.
It was no wonder he earned such a reputation, given that he would cackle and bolt whenever a baker chased him with a club.
But inside, Leo was a completely different person from what they perceived.
To Leo’s eyes, the people of this world were hopeless "idiots."
'The baker takes 15 minutes to put bread in the oven and bake it. The guard takes 420 steps to circle the alley once. The probability that I won't run into the guard when I steal the bread and turn into the third alley is 9 out of 10.'
Leo felt all the numbers in his head combine and dismantle as naturally as breathing, without ever needing to count on his fingers.
The profit margin when buying and selling goods, the frequency of a specific number appearing when dice rolled—everything in the world was converted into a perfect arrangement of numbers in his mind.
Because he was smarter than anyone else and could pierce the principles of the world with his instinct for numbers, Leo grew up as an arrogant brat who found the world boring and ridiculous.
Or rather, if one truly understood the boy's genius, it wouldn't be strange for that arrogance to be replaced by confidence.
"Idiots."
That day, too, Leo was loitering in the Piazza della Signoria when he spotted a notice board swarmed with people.
'A math problem with a 100-florin gold prize?'
Leo slipped between the legs of the adults and read the problem written on the parchment from the front row.
Three boxes. One contains gold, two contain stones. You choose one, and the host removes one stone. Do you switch your choice to the remaining box, or not?
"Hahaha! Obviously, the probability is the same! One stone is gone, so there are two boxes left—it's fifty-fifty, no matter what!"
Merchants in flashy silk robes and scholars were all puffing out their chests, pretending to be smart.
Leo snorted at the sight.
'Are they actual idiots? Switching is objectively better. Why on earth are they insisting that not switching is better?'
With his genius mathematical intuition, a perfect "extreme hypothesis" had already formed in Leo's mind.
'They're confused because there are three boxes. Let's assume there are 100 boxes. I choose box number 1. The probability that my box has the gold is 1 in 100. Terribly low. But the host, who knows the answer, opens 98 boxes filled with stones from the 99 I didn't choose. And then he asks: Will you switch, or not?'
Leo’s dirty lips curled into a cynical smirk.
'The box I chose, number 1, is still a trash box with a 1 in 100 chance. But what about that other box the host left behind? That’s a box with a 99 in 100 chance, where all the probability has been concentrated because the host forcibly cleared away 98 duds! You have to switch!'
Unable to contain his frustration, Leo shouted.
"You idiots! Obviously, you have to switch! Just assume there are 100 boxes!"
Leo shouted his intuitive hypothesis while huffing, but all he got in return was the adults' mockery.
"What is that beggar brat babbling about!"
"There are three boxes, so why are you bringing up 100? Where does a rat who can't even do arithmetic get off being so stubborn! Get lost, kid!"
Just as people were about to kick at Leo, a voice cut in.
"Tsk, tsk. The kid's hypothesis is surprisingly intuitive, but it's too rough and lacks the elegance to convince ignorant fools like you."
A gaunt man in a worn, tattered coat walked out from a corner of the square.
Deep wrinkles and hollow, sunken cheeks.
He reeked of cheap wine, but his eyes glinted with a strange madness.
"Y-you..."
"Luca the gambler!"
"Why are you here?"
The man chuckled and walked slowly toward the parchment.
"If it's a question about probability, I can't be left out. Can I?"
Luca Antonio.
He had originally been a promising professor at the University of Florence, but he was an eccentric among eccentrics who had gone mad with gambling, squandering his entire fortune and his professorship.
The reason he was obsessed with gambling wasn't just for simple pleasure.
"It's astonishingly beautiful... There exists a mathematical beauty that dull intuition cannot catch."
The world of probability created by dice and cards.
Luca was a heretic and a madman who believed that the movements of all things in the world and even the providence of God could be calculated through "probability."
"Hey! Stop talking nonsense and get lost! This isn't a place for a gambler like you!"
"Hahaha. And yet, you lot can't even solve a problem that a gambler and a little brat know."
Having been kicked out of academia and wandering the back-alley gambling dens, Luca laid out three pebbles on the ground and opened his mouth to the crowd.
"The kid is a hundred times right. It is always advantageous to switch. Exactly twice as advantageous, at that."
Precise and cold logic poured from Luca's lips.
"Let me explain. When you first choose one of the three boxes, the probability of picking the gold is one-third. Conversely, the probability of picking a 'dud' (a stone) is two-thirds. Even you idiots should know that much."
"Let's assume you picked a 'dud' with a high probability at the start (two-thirds). If the host removes one of the remaining duds, the other box must contain the gold. In other words, if you 'switch your choice' after picking a dud initially, you get the gold 100 percent of the time."
The noise in the square died down. Confusion began to cloud people's faces.
"Conversely, let's assume you were lucky and picked the gold at the start (one-third). If you switch then, you'll get a dud. Ultimately, when you adopt the strategy of 'always switching,' the probability of getting the gold is exactly two-thirds, which perfectly matches the probability of you picking a dud at the start. That is exactly twice the win rate of not switching (one-third). It makes me sick that people who don't even know mathematical truth call themselves scholars of Florence."
Before Luca's flawless, no-nonsense proof, the square became as quiet as if cold water had been splashed over it.
The merchants frantically ran calculations in their heads, but they couldn't find a single flaw in Luca's logic.
'Since the probability of picking a dud at the start is high, switching always leads to gold...'
"No way... It's actually true?"
While the crowd was in shock and murmuring, little Leo looked at Luca, who had turned his intuition into logic, with interest. Luca also looked down at the kid who had reached the answer with instinct alone and chuckled.
"Now, since we've proven the answer, we should split the florins between the kid and me. Don't you think? Or, kid. Shall we make a bet? A very simple bet. We'll guess the heads or tails of a coin. Let's assume we do it 100 times, like you like. Well? How about it?"
"No. The probability is fifty-fifty anyway."
"Hahaha. If you repeat it infinitely, the probability would be fifty-fifty. But it's only 100 times. It wouldn't be strange for an anomaly to occur."
Clap, clap, clap.
In-ho walked out with slow, heavy applause.
"Perfect. A beast-like insight that derived the answer intuitively through an extreme hypothesis. And an iconoclastic analytical power that proved it with flawless conditional probability. It was an answer well worth the 100 florins."
A smile of deep satisfaction hung on In-ho's lips.
He had abandoned the rigid establishment of Florence (the Bardi family) and cast a net on the ground, and he had caught two monsters beyond his imagination as a set.
"I'll give you the money. But will you take that money and scatter it in gambling dens or bakeries, or will you rule the world with me through money and probability?"
"Probability... you say?"
"Money... money? Is it more than 100 florins?"
"Of course. He who controls probability! Controls the world. I am not a man who is stingy with talent."
At In-ho's seductive and arrogant proposal, the two geniuses, who had been full of dissatisfaction with the world, had no choice but to nod as if bewitched.
"How charming... Forget the money. Do you have any more problems like this? It's been a while since I've had a problem that required me to use my brain."
"I... I need money! Money to show those adults who ignored me what I'm made of!"
"Good. Then both of you, follow me."
In-ho said with a wicked smile.
"Because I'm going to completely shatter your inelegant mathematics."
.
.
.
.
That night, at In-ho's temporary lodging in Florence.
"T-this, what on earth is...!"
"No way... How can such an equation exist in this world!"
Luca, the former math professor, was clutching his disheveled hair with both hands, and even the arrogant genius kid Leo was staring at the blackboard with an expression on the verge of foaming at the mouth.
The first thing In-ho did after bringing the two of them was to completely break their mathematical concepts and rebuild them from the bottom up.
"Now, erase primitive notation systems like Roman numerals (I, V, X) from your heads immediately. The numbers you will use from now on are the Arabic numerals from 0 to 9. Only when you have the concept of 0, which means 'nothing,' can you extend the decimal places infinitely and cleanly."
In-ho picked up a piece of chalk and began to ruthlessly hammer the essence of 'high school mathematics' from 21st-century South Korea onto the blackboard.
"This is 'exponents and powers,' which multiply the same number multiple times. And this is 'Log,' a magical tool that will demote the multiplication of massive numbers to simple addition, making calculations revolutionarily fast. Use 'root' (square root) when finding area and volume. Need the proportions of angles and space? Then memorize 'trigonometric functions' (sine, cosine, tangent)."
Tap, tap, tap! Every time the chalk hit the blackboard and drew unfamiliar symbols, the two geniuses of the 14th century were struck by a shock as if hit by lightning.
Luca’s pupils trembled uncontrollably. The limits of the numbers he had spent his entire life researching were being torn apart like the scrap paper of that saint.
This was not human scholarship.
It was the language of God, describing the truths of the universe.
"Haa, haa... Saint, please. Stop. I feel like my head is going to explode!"
Luca gasped, his eyes bloodshot as he pleaded.
Leo, who had once looked down upon the world with his genius intuition, could no longer withstand the massive tidal wave of knowledge. He sat slumped on the floor, a vacant, dazed grin on his face.
His arrogance was nowhere to be found, shattered into pieces.
"Feeling dizzy? But what I just taught you are merely tools—the 'hammers' and 'saws' for handling numbers."
In-ho wiped the chalkboard clean and wrote a massive heading right in the center.
[ Statistics and Probability ]
"The real reason I taught you the language of God. This is the discipline to which you must dedicate your entire lives."
"Sta... tistics?"
"Yes. The art of trapping all the world's uncertainties within numbers to master reality."
In-ho’s gaze sank, becoming sharp and cold.
What was the most painful lesson In-ho had learned in the lecture halls as a political science student in the 21st century?
It was the fact that politics and statistics were inseparable, a single, perfect entity.
Public opinion trends, margin of error, demographic shifts, mortality and survival rates by group.
Modern politics was not about crude demagoguery; it was about controlling the masses and determining the direction of power based on the scientific tool of statistics.
He who held the statistics held the power.
"Humans are terrified because they don't know when they will fall ill or when their heads will be lopped off on a battlefield. That is why they pray to God. But what if you collect data on tens of thousands of people, create a sample, and calculate the probabilities? You can convert even the uncertain lifespans and crises of humanity into 'precise monetary values'."
In-ho spread his arms toward the two monsters.
"I am going to sell massive 'life insurance' policies, using the lives of knights, lords, and serfs across all of Europe as collateral. Using the tools I have taught you, calculate the perfect 'premium base rate' that ensures no one loses money while making my fund's vaults burst at the seams. That is your mission."
Leo, the orphan boy who had mocked the world, and Luca, the mad mathematician who had tried to measure the world only through probability.
The two geniuses, who had believed themselves to be the smartest in the world, finally knelt before the overwhelming knowledge and power of a future that transcended time.
"We shall formulate the equations as you command, great Master."
Following Rouen, the massive heart of capitalism began to beat violently beneath the night sky of Florence.
0 Comments