A calculated effort
Building on TV's 'Numb3rs,' a professor aims to give math an image boost
Math rarely gets any respect.
Mark Bridger, an associate professor of math at Northeastern University, unfurls one anecdote after another to show how true that is. He tells a story about the ''outstanding student" who took his calculus class. When the student visited Bridger's office, the professor asked him why he was an engineering major rather than a math major. The student told him the decision was based on a few words of advice from his high school guidance counselor: ''You're really good in math; you should go into engineering." Bridger says of the student's story, ''We get that all the time."
Later, Bridger talks about the reaction he gets when he mentions his profession to a new acquaintance at a party. More often than not, says Bridger, the response is ''Oh, I always hated math" or some other verbal cringe. ''Would they say, 'Oh, I never liked reading,' or 'I was never good at reading'?" Bridger asks. ''Of course you wouldn't. . . . We use math every day, and people have no qualms about saying they hate it or they were never good at it. That's not true in other countries; that's an American phenomenon."
Bridger came up with an idea for changing those perceptions at the beginning of the year while talking to Robert McOwen, the chair of Northeastern's math department. Bridger's wife, Maxine, had seen an episode of the CBS series ''Numb3rs," which premiered in January. The show focuses on a mathematician (David Krumholtz)who helps his FBI agent brother solve crimes.
Bridger suggested creating a blog explaining the math explored in ''Numb3rs" as a way to generate interest in the math department, which had seen a precipitous dip in majors from 2003 to 2004. Techs at Northeastern set up the site (www.atsweb.neu.edu/math/cp/blog), and Bridger wrote his first entry Feb. 3. The site has logged more than 4,000 visits since a counter was installed in June, and Bridger estimates that the site receives 50 to 80 hits a day.
The personable blog is one example of how mathematicians are using the popular TV series to promote their field. Commercials for ''Numb3rs" boast that the show is the No. 1 program on Friday nights. In September the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics joined forces with
''I'm firmly of the belief that the power of TV to change images is huge," says Keith Devlin, executive director of Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information, who's known as ''The Math Guy" on NPR's ''Weekend Edition." ''You've only got to look at the growth of interest in criminal forensics that's been created by [the CBS crime show] 'CSI.' The number of students who want to go into that is enormous.
''These things have huge effects; they create images," he continues. ''The pop image of mathematics and its utility and the people who do it is so far off base that anything that portrays mathematics in a vaguely realistic way . . . and makes it look interesting and relates it to the real world and shows mathematicians as people who have all the foibles of other people -- that's a good thing. It makes it personal, it brings it home, and it points out the relevance of these things."
But the relationship is reciprocal. Bridger's blog also helps ''Numb3rs" by addressing the needs of the program's viewers, regardless of whether they're familiar with math.
''The show is not in the business to explain mathematics," says Bridger, who is 63. ''They sort of talk a little about it, but they can't afford to get too into it, because if the show only exists for people who really like math, theywouldn't get the kind of rating they get. I said, 'All right, I can explain some of this stuff without being too technical.' "
The blog has touched on the Fibonacci sequence, the Riemann hypothesis, and the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation, all of which are far too complicated to explain in this story. The site also talks about more familiar math subjects such as pi, prime numbers, and algorithms (a systematic method used to compute or construct something). In the Sept. 30 episode, the mathematician Charlie, looking into a botched robbery, uses a woman's keyless remote to find her address. Bridger's Oct. 2 entry explains that automatic garage doors operate with the help of a math algorithm, then details how, with the help of a car manufacturer and a state's motor vehicles department, an investigator can actually track someone down.
Caitlin Lowell, a third-year student at Northeastern who learned about Bridger's blog as a member of the school's math club, finds the entries helpful. ''They don't go very deep into the math on the actual show," says Lowell, 20, a math major studying to be an actuary, ''so it's just kind of interesting to see that what they were talking about is possible." Even her non-math-major roommates look at Bridger's site ''every once in a while," Lowell says. ''They think it's interesting."
Bridger usually writes his entries at home, where he can take advantage of ''a whole wall of math books" that he can use as resources. He tries to catch the new episodes when they air, but the show is on Friday nights. ''I have a life," he says, ''so I tape them."
It's not easy work. Writing some of the entries takes ''the better part of the day or the whole morning," Bridger says. He knew nothing about the ''squish-squash" algorithm, which came up in a May 6 episode about a UFO. He downloaded papers and with his wife, a retired math chair at the Cambridge School of Weston, waded through the highly technical information. ''I think that took the equivalent of a couple of days of work," he says.
At other times, the process can be blessedly short. Bridger's entry for the Oct. 21 episode begins, ''Well, not every show can have meaningful mathematics. It seemed to me that Charlie did a lot of scribbling and name-dropping, but didn't make a single useful mathematical contribution."
That was also what Bridger told Andrew Black, a head researcher at ''Numb3rs," when Bridger received an early version of the script as part of his job as a consultant for the show, which he started in the spring. Black initially contacted Bridger after the creators of ''Numb3rs," Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci, discovered the Northeastern blog and suggested to Black that Bridger become an unpaid consultant. (Of course, to Bridger, the lack of pay is another example of how mathematicians get no respect.)
''He's great," Black says. ''He tells it like it is; he doesn't beat around the bush. We certainly like that."
Bridger's script comments helped prevent the writers from incorrectly using Godel's Incompleteness Theorem in an upcoming episode. Thanks to Bridger's advice, the staff decided to omit the theorem altogether and apply it correctly in a later episode. Black says Bridger has been particularly helpful guiding the writers in the ways that mathematicians speak. One example: Bridger suggested that mathematicians were more likely to use the word ''trivial," says Black, rather than the phrase ''doesn't make sense."
Bridger's passion about this subject reflects the high stakes behind ''Numb3rs." A lot of mathematicians in the field are hoping for the ''CSI" effect. But most observers believe that ''Numb3rs," which ran only 13 episodes its first season (compared with a full season of 22), is far too young to have that kind of effect on viewers.
But something's happening. The California Institute of Technology -- the real-life Pasadena school that CalSci, the fictional college where Charlie works, is based on -- has seen an increase in math majors. Of this year's freshman class of 235 at Caltech 36 students elected to major in math, twice as many as the year before. At Northeastern, 14 declared math majors in the fall of 2004; 26 did so this fall.
''I certainly wouldn't suggest that the show did that," Bridger says. ''On the other hand, I think it has to have some effect."
