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“[T]he idea of function as a machine is such a powerful and intuitive one that it tends to be used pretty universally until you have a good reason to abandon it. Non-mathematicians rarely encounter such reasons, even in the more mathematically demanding disciplines like physics, computer science, and engineering. In fact, most of the time we tend to double down and promiscuously apply the “function as machine” picture to operators. If a function is a machine that turns numbers into other numbers, and operator is a machine that turns functions into other functions. One such operator is called the Laplace transform, after the french mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace. But I think we’ll stick to calling these posts Sunday Functions, even if we take the occasional look at operators.”