by Jonathan Kujawa
On “How Not to be Wrong” by Jordan Ellenberg.
I have to admit something. When I travel I cringe on the inside when the person sitting next to me asks what I do for a living. The arc of the conversation invariably follows one of a few paths. On the very rare occasion I am pleasantly surprised to find myself talking to someone with a genuine interest and curiosity in mathematics. Far more commonly we immediately head into “I hate math” or “I was never good at math”. Their general feeling is some mixture of fear, dislike, and bewilderment. I've learned that decades of bad experiences with math won't be overcome by our brief conversation. I must confess that I usually dive out the side door of the still moving conversation in a tuck-and-roll position and hope to tumble my way into sports, religion, Middle East politics, or some other more pleasant topic.
Math has a PR problem and it's mostly self inflicted. Most math curriculum is tedious, dull, confusing, and disconnected from everyday life. And any hope of turning things around is sabotaged by teachers and parents who themselves have unpleasant feelings about math. When asked, most people will say that math is important and useful but in ways which were never made clear despite years of math classes. They certainly won't say it's fun, thought provoking, or moving. And the “applications” they remember are those awful word problems involving circular ponds in square gardens, five workers making ten widgets every two hours, and other obviously fictional nonsense.
Fortunately there are folks making the effort to show the beautiful, exciting, engaging, and useful sides of math. One of those is Jordan Ellenberg. He is a well-regarded mathematician at the University of Wisconsin. Before turning to fulltime math, Ellenberg earned a master’s degree in fiction writing and wrote a novel (“The Grasshopper King”). Nowadays he has a blog on “Math, Madison, food, the Orioles, books, my kids”, and he writes occasional articles on math for Slate, the New York Times, and other media. As you can tell, he's the perfect guy to write a popular book about math. And he has! His book, “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking” has just come out and deserves to be on everyone's summer reading list. The title of this post is from Ellenberg's book and captures its spirit perfectly.