[cmath] VANCOUVER SUN editorial

[Nassif Ghoussoub]

This is the Vancouver Sun's editorial in today's edition of the  
paper...It is worth framing.

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There is no escaping the influence, and the virtues, of math


VANCOUVER SUN MARCH 18, 2009


In an effort to illustrate what he described as the "unreasonable  
effectiveness" of mathematics, the late Nobel laureate physicist  
Eugene Wigner used to tell a story.

The tale concerned two former high school friends, one of whom had  
become a statistician working on population trends. The statistician  
was explaining the meanings of various symbols he used when his friend  
asked about the meaning of pi.

When the statistician explained that pi was the ratio of the  
circumference of a circle to its diameter, his friend responded,  
incredulously, that "surely the population has nothing to do with the  
circumference of the circle."

The friend's incredulity is understandable, since it's reasonable to  
wonder what a relatively abstract matter like the circumference of a  
circle has to do with a population. But that is the unreasonable  
effectiveness of mathematics -- math seems to insinuate itself into  
everything, even things where it appears not to belong.

For example, everyone knows that math is absolutely essential to  
physics and, to a lesser extent, to the other natural sciences. But  
what many people don't know, and others choose to forget, is that math  
is crucial to the study of just about everything, including  
ecosystems, financial markets and sports scores.

Truly, everything is number, as the Pythagoreans said. And that is why  
everyone needs a decent understanding of mathematics.

The problem, of course, is that most people, particularly when they're  
in school, don't see how math is relevant to their lives. In an ironic  
way, this may be a direct result of its unreasonable effectiveness.

Although math historically grew out of practical needs, such as the  
need to measure land or to calculate financial transactions, it soon  
reached an impressive level of abstraction, a level that seemed to  
divorce it from the real world.

This abstraction makes math a difficult study, and also leads many  
students to wonder why they must study such formal fare. But  
abstraction is also math's virtue, for by refusing to restrict itself  
to any particular study, it becomes applicable to everything.

As positive as that is, it still leaves us with the problem of making  
math exciting and engaging. Indeed, as mathematician John Allen Paulos  
once observed, many people seem to wear their (putative) inability to  
do math as something of a badge of distinction.

Fortunately, though, some teachers have recognized that ignorance of  
math isn't something to be proud of -- in fact, it's fatal. And these  
teachers have taken it upon themselves to improve the teaching, and  
the learning, of this uniquely versatile subject.

One such teacher is Simon Fraser University mathematician and  
scientific director of MITACS (Mathematics of Information Technology  
and Complex Systems) Arvind Gupta, who is writing a continuing series  
for The Vancouver Sun on the importance and beauty of mathematics.

Other teachers have been involved in reworking the way math is taught  
in British Columbia and elsewhere, by emphasizing the very real world  
applications of this seemingly other worldly subject. This is a  
hopeful development, as it will help students to understand why  
they're doing math rather than simply how to do it.

And in the process, it could help more students -- and ultimately, the  
rest of us -- to better understand the world.