Clustering

Yo: how crazy is it that whole branches of math exist to describe how best to put things in boxes depending on their "sameness" or "distance", and what it actually means to be "similar" or "close together"?

I feel my mind going into a blue space when I follow the lecture - I have to think in nonverbal imagery even to approach understanding; then my mind is hang gliding, but I don't quite know how to operate the glider controls, because the language is math and I don't speak it fluently.