Footfalls above "we would see the tracing on the stage floor of a tremendously elongated variation of the figures 8 turned on its side … the mathematical symbol for infinity." Beckett was also indebted to the French psychologist Pierre Janet for his conception of hysterical behaviour. In his overview of Janet's work, Robert Woodworth in his "Contemporary Schools of Psychology", a work Beckett read, pays particular attention to Janet's description of the "hysterical paralysis of one arm", which Beckett incorporated, into May's posture. There are a number of analogies between "Footfalls" and Janet's work with a patient called Irène: He lists
Infinity symbol notation for summations and limits such as the infinity sign is conventionally interpreted as meaning that the variable grows arbitrarily large (towards infinity) rather than actually taking an infinite value. The infinity symbol may also be used to represent a point at infinity, especially when there is only one such point under consideration. This usage includes, for instance, the infinite point of a projective line, and the point added to a topological space formula_2 to form its one-point compactification formula_3. In areas other than mathematics, the infinity symbol may take on other related meanings; for instance, it has been used