A year a half ago, I wrote a research statement as part of an application for the Dissertation Year Fellowship at the Graduate Center. The application materials asked me to make my research accessible to a nonspecialist, so I attempted to do that. I later changed the application drastically, upon receiving advice from an insider that even though I was supposedly supposed to make the research accessible, that was not what they were actually looking for. Now, I present an essay adapted from that research statement on my research blog. It shows how my current research interest in big numbers stems from ideas that interested me even as a young child. It’s a few pages long, so I am posting it as a pdf file in order not to hide earlier blog posts with its length. Click here to read it.