I recently posted my equation for figuring out your current level of sanity. (See here.) As I have been thinking about it, however, I have thought that it would be best to generalize it so that it’s usable for people who are not in school. (The whole “desired grade minus current grade” thing didn’t sit right for me.)When trying to generalize this equation, however, I have discovered that this equation doesn’t seem to work as well as I first thought. I’m not saying that it is completely void, but I think it is good to note any inconsistencies or criticisms of my work. My original equation looked like this:

 Which I rationalized by saying that as the days of the semester came to a close, the students go insane because of all the homework and projects and tests that they have to deal with. (Stress from grades is accounted for as well.) This seems to work pretty well, I had several students tell me that they like the formula.

When you break it down to the most generic form, you find that it is simply:

 This also made some sort of sense. The more work that needs to be done, and the less time that is left to do the work produces the lowest feeling of sanity. (That is, the largest feeling of insanity.) On a side note, people are not always honest or accurate with predictions of work and/or time. So perhaps the equation should read more like:

But back to the generic equation, anyone with an understanding of physics should quickly recognize that:

 Which means that power and sanity are inverse each other.

 But this doesn’t make any sense at all. The more power you have, the more work you can get done per time period, the less sane you will be (or feel)?

My current conclusion is that the equation should not deal with the amount of work that a person needs to do in a certain time, but maybe something along the line of the number of events happening within a given time period. Each test, project and paper are then classified as events, but the equation is still generic enough to be applied to non-school-going people as well as holidays and vacations.

When I get my equation tweaked I’ll post it here. Until then, let me know what you think. 

UPDATE: I have discovered some issues with this equation, see my new posting here. I was thinking the other week, and developed the following formula for your current level of sanity. The main goal was to model sanity from a student’s perspective, but the formula may be tweaked for other occupations of lifestyles. Enjoy!