This piece goes to show that in skilled hands, a “how I got the story” narrative can beguile readers, making them willing to encounter difficult, and in this case obscure, material.

A science narrative is almost always, as here, a double article: There’s the human story (this one features a lunch and a stroll with a smart guy), which, in turn, softens the explanatory asides. These asides, the science (or in this case, math) explanations, require great crafting, too.

Read “Count Him In,” by Linton Weeks

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