For most people it’d be bad news to end up with some complicated expression or long seemingly random number — because it wouldn’t tell them anything. But Ramanujan was different. Littlewood once said of Ramanujan that “every positive integer was one of his personal friends.” And between a good memory and good ability to notice patterns, I suspect Ramanujan could conclude a lot from a complicated expression or a long number. For him, just the object itself would tell a story.