Sunday, June 9, 2013

In defense of numbers

I've noticed that people who are sensitive to others, to language and literature, are often unfriendly to numbers.  They seem to feel they would rather curl up with a good romance than with the cube root of 125.  I am writing to urge a different stance.

Two math books that I enjoyed are E.T. Bell's "Men of Mathematics" (1937) and John Kemeny's "Introduction to Finite Mathematics" (1957).  I admit that for many good readers, math books usually don't satisfy.  However, either of these might.  The sensitivity to language often found in English majors can be related to an insensitivity to and fear of mathematics.  Many otherwise good readers don't give math books a chance.  When reading a novel, one might expect to have to read a chapter or two before grasping the story.  In some books, much more of the work would need to be read before feeling as though the story and its direction are clear.   However, with a math book, many people who do brave the cover close it after reading a single page or less.

Lynn is reading Sr. Joan Chittester's book on aging "The Gift of Years", which we learned about from our Frederick, Maryland friends.  Sister Joan states:

We urgently need people who concentrate on the meaning of life rather than simply the speed, the mechanization, the computerization of it. Instead, we have been reduced to a collection of numbers. Governments and corporations want to know-and file away for posterity-the number of the house or apartment in which we live, the phone number at which we can be reached, the year in which we graduated from school, the number of degrees we have, the number of people in our families, the Social Security number the government has given us by which it will someday, maybe, legitimate our right to be nursed, fed, and housed somewhere in the future-and most important of all, it seems, the number of jobs we've held.

Joan Chittister. The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully (pp. 7-8). Kindle Edition.

Rhetorically, I have nothing against a good attack on any subject.  After all, all of them bear examination.  However, numbers are so often maligned that I feel somebody needs to remind people that numbers are symbols, just like letters.  Numbers, like letters and words and videos and podcasts, can be helpful, amazing, surprising, even unbelievable.  Maybe they have been showing their strength and value so much that they draw criticism from those who fear numbers or are jealous of their universal value.

I read of an Indian mathematician of whom it was said that every number was his personal friend.  Numbers can have character and meaning and personality.  I say,"Get to know the integers, the real numbers, the imaginary numbers, the transcendental numbers." Let every number be your friend, too.  Don't push them away just because they have less pigment than you do.  Numbers are not the whole story but they do have their own story.

Bertrand Russell said that it must have taken millennia for humans to realize a connection between two years and two quail.  Now, we do realize the connection.  When I tell you I have 20 students, you know I have 10 people to know and help and besides I have 10 more.  When I have introduced you to 4 of them, you know you have 16 more to meet.  Why not ask a cute number along on your next walk?  How about the cubic root of 125?

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