Over the weekend I saw Proof, the movie version of David Auburn’s play. Watching the movie (which was good enough—and who really cares, anyway, because Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty) I started wondering why there are so many narratives with math as a backdrop, when most of the people I know find math to be painfully distressing. Is it because we are more willing to accept a character’s purported brilliance if it’s numerical brilliance? Is it just that the precision of mathematics provides an interesting counter-metaphor to the chaos of human relationships? Or is there something inherently poetic about math? Do we hope that there is in fact a theory of everything and that somehow math will save us?
I was never particularly good at math. I could get it done and get the answers right, but it always took me a long time. Part of the frustration was that no one could tell me why I was doing the proofs I was doing: “Don’t ask questions! Just do the steps!” I can’t blame my teachers, though. Most of them were football coaches, not mathematicians. Midway through my junior year of high school, I dropped out of trig and pre-calculus and finished my education blissfully math free. But with the decision to quit math, I also abandoned my latent desire to become an astronomer or a botanist.
In college, I opted for an English degree instead of Journalism because I didn’t want to take statistics. But at the very end of my four years, I took two semesters of symbolic logic—what I considered the easiest way complete my math credits (somehow proofs seem a categorically different thing if they are housed in the philosophy department). I loved every moment of my proof writing. I spent hours working out proofs, fitting them into every spare moment, watching the steps unfold one after another. Maybe what I liked so much is that we actually learned what the proofs were about, why it mattered. When I read about Goedel’s proof, I was amazed at how much it explained, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. Once, I completed a proof in fewer steps than my teacher had. At first he thought I was wrong, but I argued my steps, showed him the move from one premise to another. And it was dazzling and elegant and surprising—even to my instructor. It was the proudest moment of my educational career. I don’t know what the proof was about or how it related to anything in my world, but as I guided the elegant progression of each line, I was certain of its poetry.
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In eighth grade I was the Seamount League Mathmeet Champion. The mathmeet was a day-long event with tests and challenges and logic problems and team events that brought together the brightest math stars from the eight (?) schools in our league. Four years later I was getting a C- in calculus. Granted, I was becoming slouchy and dark and resentful, but something else happened along the way. Math was always so easy and fun and I never understood how people could possibly have a problem with it. I remember as a junior or senior coming across some concept that I just couldn't wrap my head around. I didn't get it instantly and after some cursory wrangling still didn't get it. This blew my mind. I had ceased to apply myself and become rather doltish in the process. The less-talented, harderworking folks flew right be me--a lesson I still remember.
I think math is simultaneously abstract and concrete. It uses numbers which, we know (right?), are grounded in reality (unlike language). So it provides a kind of metaphor that seems at once etheral and real.
I loved math until that subtle shift from algebra to calculus. I couldn't make the shift.
Also, what about "Numbers"? It's a cool show, and mostly accurate (from what I understand). And it seems to ground theory. Now we need a show about literary theorists who solve crime or something. Or are in grad school and sleep with their professors and talk in short, deconstructive phrases. Sort of "Grey's Anatomy" meets "The Paper Chase."
I too was quite successful at math early on but couldn't make the shift to Trig. Just too much "do this because" for me. I like math as a backdrop for a movie and I do, in part, because it does serve as a counter metaphor to the messiness of human relationships. Good will hunting worked for me in this way. And I do think we accept numeric brilliance more easily: the mathematician is brilliant; the artist is a snob; the literary critic deconstructs our truth, etc. Maybe it's because math is so out there for most of us (how many stop at trig?) that we have more respect for it.
Babies are illogical;
Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile;
Illogical persons are despised.
Answer:Babies cannot manage crocodiles.
From a symbolic logic Web site
I think the math thing has to do with mystery. Math is something that is seen as mysterious to common folk (in that they are told that everyone can do it, but it seems like only a select few can). Therefor a "math genius" is seen as a mystical person in touch with how the universe really works. They become, therefore, a high priest in the cult of math/science in the eyes of laymen.
Listen, as the son of a physicist, I attest to you all: the true math people's brains are wired differently than other people's brains. Don't be fooled: just because you had some math success doesn't mean that math isn't basically like magic. It is.
I can't believe no one used that hilarious British variant "maths" in all of this. Those Brits are wacky.
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