Ambiguous, You Might Say

A Certain Ambiguity is a story about the means of facing limitations in human knowledge.

The story starts with a flashback of Ravi Kapoor when his grandfather gave him a calculator and a mathematical problem on his 12^th birthday. Ravi and his “Bauji” or his grandfather, have a very close and gentle relationship which caused Ravi to grieve much on his grandfather’s death the next day.

The loss of his grandfather’s very wise guidance caused him to grow without seeing the beauty of Mathematics.

When Ravi turned eighteen, he then received a letter from Stanford University, inviting him to study in there. Ravi was encouraged to settle a course but found difficulty in choosing to. Ravi had brief flashes of interest in Astronomy, Roman history, and game theory but found no passion in it. Finally, Ravi settled for economy.

Ravi meets Nico Aliprantis, a 62 year old professor in Stanford University whom he met in a “Thursday Night Jazz” where everyone is welcome to come and perform on stage. He befriends Prof. Aliprantis whom accidentally specializes the subject of his bauji.

Nico accidentally finds out about the imprisonment of Ravi’s grandfather and discovers a footnote in the paper which he created in mind and develops it in the paper while in the New Jersey jail.

The story then creates incredible twists between the two characters. Prof. Aliprantis lectures Math lessons wherein infinity plays a very important role while Ravi researches on his grandfather’s imprisonment while creating records on philosophical conversations about truth, assurance, and mathematics that Ravi’s grandfather made while in jail with a judge that was designated for his case. Ravi’s grandfather was put in jail under the blasphemy law.

In the Epilogue, Ravi preferred the mathematics rather than the more successful economics. Ravi then married Claire, a fellow math student whom he met during Professor Nico Aliprantis’ infinity course.

This story and the rest of the book are mostly fictional.

In my opinion, this story is very interesting. I was glad that Ravi Kapoor chose Mathematics more than Economics because for me, that was where he really belong.

But I also find this book, not just the story, influential, motivating, and interesting in a very unique way. It was not like other novels that I have read because the situation is really what is happening in the real world. It is one of the books that is worth my time because I can learn new things aside from that, it inspires me to do better especially in Mathematics.

Now I don’t just like Mathematics, but I love it, really.