Mathematical Stereotypes

Daily Express

According to an international survey of schoolchildren published this week, maths teachers are perceived as “scruffy nerds”. Or, as one pupil put it,

   “Mathematicians have no friends, except other
   mathematicians, not married or seeing anyone,
   usually fat, very unstylish, wrinkles in their
   forehead from thinking so hard, no social life
   whatsoever, 30 years old, a very short temper.”

As a journalist who has spent the last five years making television programmes and writing about maths, I find it sad that mathematicians still suffer from the nerd stereotype. It makes me wonder why this is the case, and I suspect that part of the reason is the lack of mathematical heroes.

History teachers talk about Richard the Lionheart and Winston Churchill, so perhaps the courage of these great figures rubs off on historians, giving them some level of kudos by association. English teachers discuss the work of Shakespeare and Byron, which perhaps also makes them slightly “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. Even science teachers can rely on the reputation of Einstein, a man who glimpsed the true nature of the universe. But there are very few sexy, famous mathematicians, so maths teachers can merely bask in the pale reflected glory of dead Greeks like Pythagoras.

Although the stolen Enigma machine and the story of Bletchley Park hit the headlines last year, the fact that it was British mathematicians who were largely responsible for breaking the Second World War German codes does not seem to have reached the classroom. Alan Turing, probably the greatest British codebreaker, was a heroic and tragic figure of Byronic proportions, who was persecuted for his homosexuality and who committed suicide in 1954. If pupils were more aware of Turing and his colleagues then maths and maths teachers might be cast in a different light.

Going back further in time, there is the romantic French mathematician Evariste Galois. An ardent republican and a political activist imprisoned for his beliefs, he eventually died in a duel at the age of 20, fighting over the honour of a woman. Clearly passionate and obsessive, Galois spent his final night writing up his mathematical theorems, ideas which he considered so beautiful and valuable that he could think of no better way to spend his final few hours on Earth.

In addition to the lack of role models, mathematicians suffer from the problem that their most beautiful ideas are beyond the reach of mere mortals like you and I. School maths, which is undoubtedly important, is really little more than the equivalent of spelling and grammar. Real maths, the equivalent of great plays and poems, is couched in symbols that cannot be comprehended without intense study.

Mathematical notation is similar to musical notation, inasmuch as anybody who is unschooled in music, such as myself, will stare blankly at a page of notes oblivious to what it means. However, the musical notation comes to life when the music is played, so even I can be emotionally moved by a symphony. The tragedy of maths is that there it is impossible to just lie back and hear the sound of a mathematical proof. If there were such an indirect way of appreciating mathematics, then the magnificence of numbers would be obvious to everyone. 

Although maths cannot be heard, it can on rare occasions be seen, whereupon the emotional impact is immediate. The patterns associated with chaos and fractals were turned into t-shirts, ties and posters, and the public was astounded by an intricacy unlike anything else that had ever been seen. The mathematical detail may not have been comprehensible, but at least there was a sense that whatever it was that created these patterns must have some aesthetic quality.

But why worry if mathematicians and mathematics are unloved? I think that people should have a natural curiosity of the world around them, including numbers. Dismissing mathematics as boring is as dreadful as ignoring poetry, literature, music and art. If you are not convinced by this aesthetic argument, then you should be bothered by the devastating economic impact that will occur if we continue to view mathematicians as nerds. We already have a dearth of maths teachers, so maths is not being taught as well as it could be, so fewer students take maths, so fewer students become maths teachers, and so on. This circle is particularly vicious because we live in the Information Age, an era when a numerate workforce is essential to a thriving economy. Without a plentiful supply of great maths teachers, and if today’s children continue to view maths teachers as nerds and maths as nerdish, then pupils will drop the subject at the first available opportunity, which means that we will not have the skills needed to compete with the rest of the world.

I have just returned from a week in San Francisco, where the mathematicians of Silicon Valley are hailed as millionaire visionaries. Indeed, California is attracting mathematicians from around the world, because they are treated with respect and rewarded with money and prestige. If Britain is going to have any hope of competing in the digital marketplace, then we need to invest in mathematics now and change our attitude to maths. It would be difficult for the government to over-estimate the crisis in maths education. Government efforts to recruit more maths teachers should be doubled and redoubled. The alternative is a country that in decade from now is stuck in the Information Dark Age. Mock maths teachers at your peril. Our future depends on them.