It’s all about the numbers… by Anthony R. '09

Here at MIT, just about everything is referred to by its number. To get from East Campus to LaVerde’s Market, you enter Building 66, pass through Buildings 56, 16, 8, 10, and 3, and emerge from the basement of Building 7. And when you register for classes, you speak of taking 3.091, 8.01, 18.01, and 21W.784. Tell someone you’re taking “Physics 1,” and they’ll ask “8.01 or 8.012?”.

As a celebration of MIT’s devotion to numbers, I will once again enter our hallowed underground passageways — this time, in search of rooms which share numbers with common freshman-year classes. :-)

Here are the contenders:

6-001 room 6-001, Building 6 basement. Corresponds to 6.001: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course 6).

7-012 room 7-012, Building 7 basement. Corresponds to 7.012: Introductory Biology, taught by no other than Eric Lander of MIT’s Broad Institute.

18-014 room 18-014, Building 18 basement. Corresponds to 18.014: Calculus (single-variable) with Theory.

Join me on a journey to 18-014 and 6-001, followed by another entry sometime Tuesday with 7-012 and more interesting basement tidbits. :-)

Here, we enter Building 18 and observe the entry to a helpful staircase.

Gotta have a Coke down there!

(looking left as we exit the staircase)

(looking right)

Eureka! A random laboratory with the unfortunate designation of a hard intro calc class. ;-)

If you peek through the windows on the door, you see a few things within the entry area of the lab.

So we exit Building 18, walk over to 66, descend the stairs (as detailed in the last entry), and proceed through 56 and 16 like we’re headed for the Infinite Corridor. Instead of turning right, we just keep going, leaving Building 8 and entering Building 6.

(Yes, that change in flooring marks the building change.)

Aha! A close inspection of Building 6’s floor plan (available to any member of the MIT community via a Web page) reveals that this unassuming pair of doors holds the magical designation of 6-001.