> How inspiring founders are to students is a function roughly of how rich and famous they are divided by how much older they are than the students.

I'm not fond of this kind of math metaphor. "roughly" is doing a lot of work here. He's saying that richer founders are more inspirational than poorer founders and younger founders are more inspirational than older founders. But when you put it that way, it's so obvious that maybe it's not worth saying. So he cast it as an equation:

inspiration = wealth / age-diff

But you can't take this equation literally. I mean, what if the founder is younger than the students? Do you get negative inspiration? What happens if you divide by 0? Is inspiration undefined in that case? Is a $2 billion net-worth 30-year-old really twice as inspirational as a $1 billion net-worth at the same age? Is Elon Musk 10 times more inspirational than Bill Gates?

This is excessive, and unjustified precision. Save equations for actual equations.

Obligatory disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of Paul Graham, and I only criticize because he is worth criticizing. Please don't block me.

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keithnz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

seems like you understood the general purpose of the equation... no need to over analyze it. Roughly does all the work it needs to.

	▲	GMoromisato 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but it's like someone saying, "I could care less" or "I literally died". I understand the meaning, but it's still ugly. And, of course, I should say that this is just how it struck me. Other people may not care and that's fine too.