When I was about 8 years old, my family and a bunch of other families from my church participated in a jog-a-thon. We asked friends and neighbors to support us by pledging a certain number of dollars per lap that would ultimately go to the designated charity. Then, on the big day, we kids would run as many laps as our little legs would carry us. Then, our friends and neighbors were on the hook to donate what they had pledged.

The track we ran on was probably a standard quarter-mile, oval track. Like most seven year olds, I hadn’t taken geometry yet. As I started another lap on the large arc that was the end of oval the track, I thought to myself, “why should I bother running around this curved part? It would be much easier just to run straight across the field. That would get me to the end of this curve faster. It would save me some time, it would probably enable me to run more laps, and that would raise more money for the charity.” It was a pretty brilliant plan...

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