Mathematics in Popular Culture: Essays on Appearances in Film, Fiction, Games, Television and Other Media

355 Pages·2012·3.69 MB·English

by  Jessica K. Sklar

Mathematics in
Popular Culture
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Mathematics in
Popular Culture
Essays on Appearances
in Film, Fiction, Games,
Television and Other Media
Edited by JESSICA K. SKLAR and
ELIZABETH S. SKLAR
Foreword by Keith Devlin
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
ALSOOFINTEREST
King Arthur in Popular Culture (edited by Elizabeth S. Sklar and
D onald L. Hoffman; McFarland, 2002)
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Mathematics in popular culture : essays on appearances in film,
fiction, games, television and other media / edited by Jessica K.
Sklar and Elizabeth S. Sklar ; foreword by Keith Devlin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-4978-1
softcover : acid free paper
1. Mathematics in mass media. 2. Popular culture—
United States. 3. Mass media and culture—United States.
I. Sklar, Jessica K., 1973– II. Sklar, Elizabeth Sherr.
P96.M395M38 2012
700'.46—dc23 2012000543
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2012 Jessica K. Sklar and Elizabeth S. Sklar. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without p ermission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: David Krumholtz as Charlie Eppes in NUMB3RS
(CBS/Photofest)
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
For Rubby Sherr, pater familias
and for Frank Anderson, pater nonfamilias
Acknowledgments
We are deeply indebted to the many individuals who
helped to bring this book to fruition. Our thanks to Daniel
Heath for sharing with us his knowledge of projective geom-
etry; Jonathan Melusky, Aaron Malver, and Roberta Davidson
for serving as preliminary readers; Elliott Bangs for his won-
derful work on our graphics; Janet Curtiss, for her indexing
prowess; and Wilkie Collins IV, for rescuing us from some
embarrassing gaucheries and creative spelling moments. Also
due our thanks are Jessica’s students and Facebook friends, who
were liberal with their technical advice. Our authors have our
abiding gratitude for their willingness to venture across disci-
plinary boundaries, for their intriguing essays (all but two of
which are original to this collection)—and for enduring our
fits of editorial zeal. We are grateful as well to math and pop
culture maven Keith Devlin for his generous foreword, and to
Alex Kasman, who allowed us to plunder his online database
of mathematical fiction for our appendices and advised us on
pertinent entries. Finally, we thank the periodicals department
of the Mathematical Association of America for permission to
reprint in this volume the two previously-published essays.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Foreword by Keith Devlin 1
Introduction
JESSICA K. SKLAR and ELIZABETH S. SKLAR 3
Part One: The Game
A Survey of Fictional Mathematics in Literature
ALEX KASMAN 9
“You Never Said Anything about Math”: Math Phobia and Math
Fanaticism in the World of Lost
KRISTINE LARSEN 27
What’s in a Name? The Matrix as an Introduction to Mathematics
KRIS GREEN 44
Mapping Contagion and Disease, Catastrophe and Destruction:
Computer Modeling in the Epidemiological Disaster Narrative
KATHLEEN COYNE KELLY and DOUGLAS WHITTINGTON 55
Fair and Unfair Division in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
WILLIAM GOLDBLOOM BLOCH and MICHAEL D. C. DROUT 71
Game Theory in Popular Culture: Battles of Wits and Matters of Trust
JENNIFER FIRKINS NORDSTROM 86
Coming Out of the Dungeon: Mathematics and Role-Playing Games
KRIS GREEN 99
Playing Moneyball: Math and Baseball
JEFF HILDEBRAND 114
A Mathematician Does the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle
GENE ABRAMS 123
Part Two: The Players
XKCD: A Web of Popular Culture
KAREN BURNHAM 137
vii
viii Table of Contents
Counting with the Sharks: Math-Savvy Gamblers in Popular Culture
MATTHEW LANE 148
Stand and Deliver Twenty Years Later
KSENIJA SIMIC-MULLER, MAURA VARLEY GUTIÉRREZ and
RODRIGO JORGE GUTIÉRREZ 163
Smart Girls: The Uncanny Daughters of Arcadia and Proof
SHARON ALKER and ROBERTA DAVIDSON 172
Mean Girls: A Metamorphosis of the Female Math Nerd
KRISTIN ROWAN 187
The Mathematical Misanthrope and American Popular Culture
KENNETH FAULKNER 198
Alan Turing: Reflecting on the Life, Work, and Popular Representations
of a Queer Mathematician
K. G. VALENTE 219
Mat(t)h Anxiety: Math as Symptom in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting
DONALD L. HOFFMAN 233
Part Three: Math + Metaphor
Thinking Outside the Box: Application Versus Discovery in Saw and Cube
JESSICA K. SKLAR 247
Tolstoy’s Integration Metaphor from War and Peace
STEPHEN T. AHEARN 258
“We’ll all change together”: Mathematics as Metaphor in Greg Egan’s Fiction
NEIL EASTERBROOK 265
Truth by the Numbers: Mysticism and Madness in Darren Aronofsky’s π
LAURIE A. FINKE and MARTIN B. SHICHTMAN 274
Flatland in Popular Culture
LILA MARZ HARPER 288
Discovering a Higher Plane: Dimensionality and Enlightenment in
Flatland and Diaspora
CHRIS PAK 304
Projective Geometry in Early Twentieth-Century Esotericism: From the
Anthroposophical Society to the Thoth Tarot
RICHARD KACZYNSKI 314
Appendices
A: Mathematics in Performance Media 333
B: Mathematics in Fiction and Poetry 334
About the Contributors 337
Index 341
Foreword
by Keith Devlin
What is the connection between Lindsay Lohan, Tina Fey, and mathematics? This mar-
velous new book will tell you the answer, as its authors take you on a tour of some of the books,
plays, films, television shows, and video games that weave mathematics into their stories.
The novella Flatland, the movies Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind, π, and Stand
and Deliver, the stage plays (and in two cases subsequently movies) Arcadia, Breaking the
Code and Proof, and the hugely successful television crime series NUMB3RS—I suspect
these are the most obvious examples of the appearance of mathematics in popular culture.
But they are by no means unique, as a quick glance at Alex Kasman’s Mathematical Fiction
Homepage (http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT) will indicate. In this com-
pendium, editors Jessica K. Sklar and Elizabeth S. Sklar provide 24 in-depth analyses of
portrayals of mathematics in popular culture.
The editors do not seek to provide a comprehensive survey of all works that contain
or refer to mathematics. Instead, they have assembled what for the most part are analyses
of examples where the marriage of mathematics and popular culture has real substance.
The mathematical connection is not always apparent until someone points it out. Who
would think there are mathematical ideas behind the popular television series Lostor the disas-
ter movie Outbreak? The cult comedy movie The Princess Bridecontains an oft-quoted scene
that provides an illustration of game-theoretic reasoning, and Tolstoy’s War and Peaceuses
calculus as a metaphor. Science fiction novels sometimes have mathematical themes, of course,
as do some video games and some cartoons. Sport appears too, though the compendium’s
focus on culture means it does so by way of a bestselling book, Michael Lewis’s Moneyball.
Though many of the examples of popular culture discussed can be (and frequently are)
dismissed as “shallow,” the very fact that mathematics lies just beneath the surface indicates
that even “mass entertainment” can have a hidden depth. Regardless of the cultural status
of the examples chosen, the authors consistently deliver in-depth analyses, and the result is
a unique volume that will surely fascinate.
Keith Devlin is a cofounder and executive director of Stanford University’s Human-Sciences and Technologies
Advanced Research Institute, a cofounder of the Stanford Media X research network, a senior researcher at
Stanford’s Center for the Study of Language and Information, and National Public Radio’s “Math Guy.” He
wrote Mathematics Education for a New Era(2011) and has published more than 80 research articles and
30 books.
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