Math has its own language
Math has its in-jokes
Math has puzzles and games
Math has a shared history
Math has common cultural references
Math appears in popular culture
Mathematics has existed as a discipline since the dawn of civilization, and yet a very small percentage of humanity actually is engaged in doing any mathematics beyond basic addition and subtraction. The group of people who do engage in mathematics is often referred to as "the mathematics community." The definition of community being applied here is "the body of people in a learned occupation" (from Cambrige International Dictionary); however, this group of mathematicians in many ways might be more accurately described as a subculture.
DEFINITION OF SUBCULTURE (from Cambridge International Dictionary)
The way of life, customs and ideas of a particular group of people within a society, which are different from the rest of society.
It is fair to say that the large majority of the population views mathematics with apathy, suspicion, or perhaps even antipathy. I'm sure you had the experience of being in a conversation with non-mathematicians where the topic of mathematics comes up and someone proudly announces: "I was not good at math in High School," or "I hate math," Can you think of any other area where people are proud to declare their ignorance? Only occasionally do you get: "I loved math in High School." As much as mathematicians try to reach across and communicate mathematics to the world, it seems there is a clear line separating the math subculture from the rest of the world. This math subculture is kept alive and vibrant by working mathematicians, but is also enriched by the amateurs who enjoy mathematics and want to participate in the mathematics community.
There is much more to mathematics besides proving theorems and solving problems. Some of the themes of the math subculture are:
Mathematics has co-opted many words from English and given them technical definitions. Words like: imaginary, irrational , chaos, integral, pole, etc. Mathematicians often use these words in everyday conversation with other mathematicians in ways that take advantage of the double meaning.
Some words coined by mathematicians, or words with mathematical origins, have leaked into everyday language, usually with the definition corrupted. Words/expressions like: matrix, cipher, outlier, zero-sum game, etc.
There are some jokes that you have to be mathematically minded to appreciate. Two of my favourites:
A mathematician friend of mine, when describing a mutual friend (who I will call X) who is "a character," says: " I am thankful for X's existence, but I even more thankful for X's uniqueness."
Heard on an answering machine: "You have reached an imaginary number, please hang up, rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."
There are compendiums of math jokes available on the internet. Some are good, some are groaners, and some are unrepeatable. If you want more math jokes, check out the following links. (There will be redundancies.):
Volker Runde's
Math Jokes Page
Andej and
Elena Cherkaev's Math Jokes Page
David's Canonical List of Math Jokes
Games like Chess, Othello, and Go are mainstays among mathematicians. Some lesser-known games and puzzles that have fascinated the math community include:
HEX
The game of HEX was invented at Princeton by John Nash (of "A Beautiful Mind" fame) as an example of a perfect game with perfect information. I.e. there will be no draws (unlike tic-tac-toe) and no hidden information (unlike most card games where your opponent cannot see your hand). The games is played by two players alternately setting stones on a hexagonal grid on a square board. The object is to be the first player to make a path of stones from your side of the board to the opposite side. Nash showed that, theoretically, the first person to play always can win, and yet no one knows what the winning strategy should be. It was played at Princeton for many years, and was eventually marketed by Parker Brothers as HEX. You can play on-line at: MAZEWORKS
NIM
Nim is a game which is quite simple to play. The game starts with three piles of beans (with a reasonably large number of beans in each pile). A legal move is to take any number of beans from one of the piles and the winner is the person who takes the last bean. Two players take turns choosing, and the first player to take beans has a winning strategy, but it is not that obvious immediately what it is. I won't spoil the surprise, but it involves some base 2 arithmetic. You can play on-line at: CUT-THE-KNOT and once you master the strategy you can have fun beating your non-mathematician friends. There are many variations of this game, and active research is being done in this area. Check with Dr. Horrocks for more on this interesting area.
MAGIC SQUARES
Fill in an N by N array with numbers from 1 to N^2, so that all rows, columns and diagonals add to the same number. Try it at allmath.com.
The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
ERDOS NUMBER : Erdos was a prolific mathematician with numerous co-authors. Your Erdos number is the length of the shortest path of co-authors connecting you to Erdos. My Erdos number is 3.
MATH GENEALOGY PROJECT : If you consider your Ph.D. supervisor to be your "mathematical progenitor", you can trace back generations, and hundreds of years in your mathematical family tree, perhaps to Gauss or Euler.
SCI.MATH FAQ :Why does 1= .9999...? Did Indiana really pass a law declaring pi to be 3? These and more weighty math matters are discussed in the FAQ for sci.math newsgroup.
MATH URBAN LEGENDS: In the strange world of mathematics, most urban legends turn out to be true, or at least have a germ of truth in them.
MATH QUOTES
Here are some quotes from mathematicians or about math/mathematicians. One of my favorites is by John von Neumann who said: "In mathematics, you don't understand things, you get used to them." There are lots of other interesting quotes at:
FAME
There are very few mathematicians which are famous among the general populace. Try this test: Ask a non-mathematician friend to name a famous mathematician. Chances are, if the person can come up with a name, either
I had some math students conduct an informal poll among their (non-mathematician) friends. The poll consisted of two questions:
Ten seconds were given to answer each question. The results are still coming in, and I will be giving more details later on this page, but so far, most respondents could not even name one mathematician in either category. The most interesting answer received do far: Dewey (as in the Dewey decimal system I guess).
Here are some lists of some famous people who you may not have realized were also mathematicians (or at least have one degree in mathematics). They are famous for some other reason besides being a math major.
OTHER LINKS IN RECREATIONAL MATHEMATICS
Occasionally, mathematics rises from its subculture to impinge on the popular culture, which usually gets it wrong, to the consternation (but sometimes amusement) of mathematicians. At least we usually aren't shown wearing white lab coats, like just about any physicist, chemist or biologist.
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
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