Ah, merge. Or to get into the action of it – merging.

We’ve come to use the word merge as just another synonym for combining two entities into one entity. Two parts into one. (Ideally) a seamless action! (Ideally) the melding of one into another that creates a new union, redefined, renamed… renewed(?).

There’s two characteristics, though, of a merge that get smooshed and forgotten about when a merge is thought of as a simple act of combination.

The first one is about identity, or to put a finer point on it: personal identity. Whether it’s in a marriage or in a business merger, there is an assumption that one of those two entities holds more value than the other; therefore, one entity might succumb to a certain degree, perhaps fully taking on the name of the other. To be sure, there is value that’s recognized in the hereto non-dominant part, otherwise the merge – be it a marriage or a business merger – would not have been proposed in the first place.

But there’s an imbalance of power that’s sorta suggested right from the start of the merge. And sometimes that suggestion is presented as a ‘heads-up’. Some might even say a warning…

Which brings us to the second characteristic, the descriptor that really shines a light on the fantastic’ness of the mathematical definition of the word merge. This definition presents that each of the things that are being combined already have some order to them, and the key here is all about efficiency because it also says that the two orders become one order. Not just two becomes one – but two orders become one order.

If you ever get the pleasure of being in a vehicle with me when two lanes need to merge into one, whether that’s due to road construction or if we’re on the entrance ramp of a highway, I tend to start mumbling to myself, “It’s a zipper. Make a zipper. Be the zipper.” Many states actively promote doing this, like Minnesota.

Yeah, pet peeve #2503 for me is when folks start merging their car the moment they see that there is a need to merge up ahead. Hey Friends! You are not ‘cutting’ when you continue (at the designated speed, there’s no need to speed up) if you (safely and cautiously, of course) go the frick around the person who is attempting to merge the moment they see the sign – up ahead -that they’ll, eventually, need to merge.

I say, drive on up to that point of merging, make sure to put your blinker on, don’t be overly aggressive nor jam the nose of your car into the merging lane, but, yeah, merge Up There – not Back There – where the flow of traffic is, now, not flowing.

And if you are a person already in the merging lane – hey – let that Purveyor of Efficiency, the merger, into the line in front of you. Be like a ‘tooth’ on the zipper, taking turns, falling into line. Prevent a back-up behind you. Like – the efficiency diagram for this situation has already been designed. Combine those two orders into one order.

Tell us – in the socials or in the comments on the Math WoW page — where do you see opportunities to merge, to combine two or more ordered lists into a single ordered list?