Fine line tattoo of the fundamental theorem of calculus, F(b) minus F(a) equals a definite integral, in black ink on the left ribs.

Calculus equation on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo of the equation F(b) minus F(a) equals the integral from a to b of f(x) dx, set in a serif typeface with the integral limits written above and below the sign. The thin, even linework is shown on a pale skin tone, with a white garment lifted over the upper part of the frame. The text runs horizontally across the side of the ribcage, centred in the image.

Fine line Ribs Text

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold still and listen, because this is the part Mr Adair never wrote down in the council ledger. Every night he walked the river wall with his pole and his tin of paraffin, lighting the lamps one after another, and every few weeks some clever lad from the office would come down with a clipboard asking how much light the whole embankment gave out. Adair never argued. He'd just point at the two ends. "Tell me what the ledger says at the bridge," he'd say, "and what it says at the weir. The difference is your answer. You don't need to chase the flame between them."

Keep reading

The ledger was the trick of it. Every drop of oil the council ever handed him went down in a column, a running total, so that wherever you stopped in the book, the figure told you everything burned up to that point. Take the sum at the far end, take away the sum at the near end, and there was the whole stretch of light, wavering and dimming as the damp rolled off the water, and not one lamp counted twice. The young clerks thought it was a sort of cheating. Adair thought it was the only honest way to measure anything.

Then came the winter the fog sat on the river for a fortnight, and young Danny Pryce, who had been sent to shadow him, decided he would count every single yard himself. He walked the wall with a notebook, stopping at each lamp, and by the third night he had blisters, a cold in his chest and a total that disagreed with the ledger by a bucket of oil. Adair took the notebook, ran his thumb down the ledger's last column, and said only, "Start with the bridge, son. Always start with the bridge."