Monday, March 20, 2006
Mathematicians Can Be a Pain!
Math can be a big headache. Way back in the seventeenth century a teacher in a small town in Brunswick (now part of Germany) had become exasperated with his elementary class. Hoping for a few minutes of peace and quiet he told the class to add all the numbers between one and an, hundred. He turned and headed back to his desk. Almost immediately Carl Friedrich Gauss walked up and handed him the answer—5050. The teacher was momentarily flabbergasted. He then thought about the silver lining on the cloud. He had a mathematical genius on his hand. And indeed he did. Gauss is generally recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. The teacher was consoled.
My own personal problems with math began during my undergraduate days. I had zipped right through College Algebra with an "A." Since I had no real interest in the subject and since I had satisfied my general education math requirement, I should have been done with math completely. However, there was a certain young lady in whom I was interested who was a math major. So, in order to get to know her better I signed up for a course in Honors Trig. I should mention that this course was an overload for me. At that time there was an early drop date for all courses. And sometime after the drop date had passed, the young lady had lost all interest in me. There I was stuck in a class that I did not need—surrounded by nothing but math majors.
When I moved on to graduate school to pursue a degree in history, I rented a room on University Avenue from Mrs. Sweeny for $30 a month. Dwight Love, a math person, had been living there for a year and was completing his requirements for a Masters Degree in Math. About two weeks after I moved in he was given a math problem to solve for his thesis. That night right before supper I heard a loud shout “Eureka!” I went to investigate. Dwight told me that he had already solved the problem. Knowing that it would eventually take me months and months to write my own thesis, I thought that I must be in the wrong field. At noon the next day I saw Dwight hard at work with a puzzled look on his face. I asked him if something were wrong. He informed me that he had found a glitch in his proof and that the problem was not solved. The next day soon after supper I heard a vigorous “Eureka!” I went in and congratulated Dwight. The next day at noon he had that familiar puzzled look on his face. There was another glitch. The next four or five months alternated between glitches and “Eureka’s!” He finally got it right. To celebrate he wanted to go out and eat at a brand new restaurant—Shoney’s Big Boys. There was a long waiting line, so Dwight gave them our name and we waited. After fifteen or twenty minutes a loud voice crackled over the loudspeaker, “We now have a table for the Love party of two!” Every eye in the establishment immediately started searching for the Love party. Dwight hopped up and I stayed seated. He said, “Are you coming?” I said “Not right now. I will see you in about five minutes!”
Several years later my father-in-law was visiting us in Magnolia. He was not your typical father-in-law. He was a West Point graduate (number one in his class) and a retired army colonel. He had a Masters degree in Nuclear Physics from the University of Chicago where he had studied under Edward Teller. The military did not trust the scientists who were working on the atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico. He and several other bright army minds were sent there to keep a watchful eye on all those scientists. I should note that he was also not particularly fond of historians. My mother-in-law had cautioned me to steer clear of certain subjects in our conversations. Thinking math was a suitable subject for conversation, I asked him if he knew on which day(s) of the week Leap Year was most likely to fall. He looked at me kind of funny and informed me that the probability had to be the same for each day of the week. He brushed aside my protests as coming from an uninformed historian. Realizing that I had inadvertently treaded on dangerous ground, I dropped the subject. The next morning he apologized. He had stayed up all night doing the math and had found that I was correct. From that day forth he had a new respect for at least one historian. How had I arrived at my conclusion? I looked at a perpetual calendar and noticed that there was a disparity in the number of calendars associated with leap years. Five minutes of investigation led to an interesting conclusion: the 29th of February is most likely to fall on a Sunday, Tuesday or a Friday. Useful information to know. You never know when you might be able to use it in a conversation with your father-in-law. Today I happened to glance at an online Math Forum sponsored by a Dr. Math. There was a lively debate on how often a leap year would fall on a Sunday or any other day of the week. Endless hours had been spent calculating the probability using elaborate formulas. Arguments and proofs were flying back and forth. Time out for all you mathematicians. No math is actually needed—just five minutes and a perpetual calendar should do just fine.
Math can be a big headache. Way back in the seventeenth century a teacher in a small town in Brunswick (now part of Germany) had become exasperated with his elementary class. Hoping for a few minutes of peace and quiet he told the class to add all the numbers between one and an, hundred. He turned and headed back to his desk. Almost immediately Carl Friedrich Gauss walked up and handed him the answer—5050. The teacher was momentarily flabbergasted. He then thought about the silver lining on the cloud. He had a mathematical genius on his hand. And indeed he did. Gauss is generally recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. The teacher was consoled.
My own personal problems with math began during my undergraduate days. I had zipped right through College Algebra with an "A." Since I had no real interest in the subject and since I had satisfied my general education math requirement, I should have been done with math completely. However, there was a certain young lady in whom I was interested who was a math major. So, in order to get to know her better I signed up for a course in Honors Trig. I should mention that this course was an overload for me. At that time there was an early drop date for all courses. And sometime after the drop date had passed, the young lady had lost all interest in me. There I was stuck in a class that I did not need—surrounded by nothing but math majors.
When I moved on to graduate school to pursue a degree in history, I rented a room on University Avenue from Mrs. Sweeny for $30 a month. Dwight Love, a math person, had been living there for a year and was completing his requirements for a Masters Degree in Math. About two weeks after I moved in he was given a math problem to solve for his thesis. That night right before supper I heard a loud shout “Eureka!” I went to investigate. Dwight told me that he had already solved the problem. Knowing that it would eventually take me months and months to write my own thesis, I thought that I must be in the wrong field. At noon the next day I saw Dwight hard at work with a puzzled look on his face. I asked him if something were wrong. He informed me that he had found a glitch in his proof and that the problem was not solved. The next day soon after supper I heard a vigorous “Eureka!” I went in and congratulated Dwight. The next day at noon he had that familiar puzzled look on his face. There was another glitch. The next four or five months alternated between glitches and “Eureka’s!” He finally got it right. To celebrate he wanted to go out and eat at a brand new restaurant—Shoney’s Big Boys. There was a long waiting line, so Dwight gave them our name and we waited. After fifteen or twenty minutes a loud voice crackled over the loudspeaker, “We now have a table for the Love party of two!” Every eye in the establishment immediately started searching for the Love party. Dwight hopped up and I stayed seated. He said, “Are you coming?” I said “Not right now. I will see you in about five minutes!”
Several years later my father-in-law was visiting us in Magnolia. He was not your typical father-in-law. He was a West Point graduate (number one in his class) and a retired army colonel. He had a Masters degree in Nuclear Physics from the University of Chicago where he had studied under Edward Teller. The military did not trust the scientists who were working on the atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico. He and several other bright army minds were sent there to keep a watchful eye on all those scientists. I should note that he was also not particularly fond of historians. My mother-in-law had cautioned me to steer clear of certain subjects in our conversations. Thinking math was a suitable subject for conversation, I asked him if he knew on which day(s) of the week Leap Year was most likely to fall. He looked at me kind of funny and informed me that the probability had to be the same for each day of the week. He brushed aside my protests as coming from an uninformed historian. Realizing that I had inadvertently treaded on dangerous ground, I dropped the subject. The next morning he apologized. He had stayed up all night doing the math and had found that I was correct. From that day forth he had a new respect for at least one historian. How had I arrived at my conclusion? I looked at a perpetual calendar and noticed that there was a disparity in the number of calendars associated with leap years. Five minutes of investigation led to an interesting conclusion: the 29th of February is most likely to fall on a Sunday, Tuesday or a Friday. Useful information to know. You never know when you might be able to use it in a conversation with your father-in-law. Today I happened to glance at an online Math Forum sponsored by a Dr. Math. There was a lively debate on how often a leap year would fall on a Sunday or any other day of the week. Endless hours had been spent calculating the probability using elaborate formulas. Arguments and proofs were flying back and forth. Time out for all you mathematicians. No math is actually needed—just five minutes and a perpetual calendar should do just fine.
