Mathematics in Popular Culture This page intentionally left blank 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. 1