previous column	next column

Math in Pop Culture
by Shaw

Being a mathematics graduate student doesn't necessarily mean that I know any more about mathematics than anyone else you would happen upon in the street. In fact most of the things that non-mathematicians call "mathematics" are areas of weakness for most of us. The most common example is dividing up the check a restaurant. People generally assume I will be capable of doing this. I am not. But the observation always results in ironic hilarity:

Non-Math 1: "Check's here, how much do I owe?"

Shaw: "Don't look at me, I can't add, subtract, multiply or divide."

Non-Math 2: "What? Shaw, you're a math grad student, you should be able to do this in a second."

[all]: (Huge roar of laughter)

Non-Math 1: "Yeah, Shaw, so like what do you do all day?"

[all]: (Huge roar of laughter)

The answer to the above question is for another column on another day. What I want to talk about is the terrible representation of mathematics in society. The above is a common example. Unfortunately, pop culture has provided us with worse, and it makes me sick.

As far as movies go, there are four of them that I know of, all critically acclaimed. Pi, The Man Who Loved Numbers, Good Will Hunting, and A Beautiful Mind. The first thing to note is that all of these movies are not in fact about mathematics, but about crazy people.

The character in Pi (a fictional account) is a recluse and an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who drives himself mad in an idiotic quest to derive some meaning from a stupid number that is not all that interesting (subject of another column). Crazy.

The character in The Man Who Loved Numbers (a biographical film adapted from the book) is an uneducated genius who excludes himself from society and works on number theory in the bowels of India, only eating when his devoted wife manages to stuff balls of rice down his throat. Crazy.

Will Hunting is a strangely attractive genius who lives in the slums of South Boston and works as a janitor at the MIT math department. He is the least crazy of the three protagonists, but then this movie is not as much about math as it is about a crappy wrong side of the tracks love story between Hunting and a 30 year old woman who for some reason lives in a Harvard dorm and is being pursued by a stunningly ugly albino who studies history of all things. Perhaps the strangest thing about this movie is Robin Williams. Somehow he manages to appear physically threatening in the scene where Will makes a joke about his wife. For anyone who has seen Bicentennial Man, Patch Adams, Mrs. Doubtfire, Toys, or any of the other feel-good schlock he has made, this is a real leap, and won him an Oscar.

Finally, John Nash, subject of A Beautiful Mind, snags himself a hot wife, gets a classified government job, is clinically diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and then wins the Nobel Prize for Economics. The math in this movie is reduced to the (fictionalized) scene in a bar where hitting on girls leads him to figure out his famous Nash Equilibrium. Anyway, John Nash: crazy.

The point is what we are provided with by pop culture is an unfortunate characterization of all mathematicians as insane beyond repair. Next column: why this characterization is completely, totally, 100% accurate.