
I’ve always been a numbers guy. In elementary school, if anyone made fun of my disproportionately large head, I would withhold answers to math homework. Yes, I was an egghead in more ways than one.
Of course, I love to think about the intersection of words and numbers. The other day I heard someone say “to the tenth degree.” As a number and word nerd, I knew this was wrong. In fact, to the tenth degree is a large amount; however, the correct term is “to the nth degree.”
To the nth degree means “as much as possible.” In math terms, to the nth degree means the highest power of the variable in a polynomial — think something “squared,” which would be a number with a...