Ebook: Mathematics in Popular Culture: Essays on Appearances in Film, Fiction, Games, Television and Other Media

Mathematics has maintained a surprising presence in popular media for over a century. In recent years, the movies Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind, and Stand and Deliver, the stage plays Breaking the Code and Proof, the novella Flatland and the hugely successful television crime series NUMB3RS all weave mathematics prominently into their storylines. Less obvious but pivotal references to the subject appear in the blockbuster TV show Lost, the cult movie The Princess Bride, and even Tolstoy's War and Peace.

In this collection of new essays, contributors consider the role of math in everything from films, baseball, crossword puzzles, fantasy role-playing games, and television shows to science fiction tales, award-winning plays and classic works of literature. Revealing the broad range of intersections between mathematics and mainstream culture, this collection demonstrates that even "mass entertainment" can have a hidden depth.

About the Author
Jessica K. Sklar, an associate professor of mathematics at Pacific Lutheran University, has published in the field of noncommutative ring theory and in the more readily accessible field of recreational mathematics. Elizabeth S. Sklar, a professor emerita at Wayne State University, specializes in Old and Middle English language and literature. She has published extensively in the fields of modern and medieval Arthurian legend.


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
Counting with the Sharks: Math-Savvy Gamblers in Popular Culture
MATTHEW LANE 148
Stand and Deliver Twenty Years Later
KSENIJA SIMIC-MULLER, MAURA VARLEY GUTIERREZ and RODRIGO JORGE GUTIERREZ 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