In the Dark

I’m not sure whether to be amused or appalled by the story of the Professor whose flight was delayed in order for him to be interrogated because a fellow passenger saw him doing some mathematical calculations. I know some people who find mathematics scary but that’s taking things too far! I wonder if the passenger was Simon Jenkins?

I was wondering whether the calculation was concerned with plane geometry but that seems not to be the case. The academic concerned is an Economist and he was studying a differential equation. That surprises me. I hadn’t realised economists knew about calculus. Or about anything else, for that matter.

The BBC coverage of the story used the following image:

The physicists among you will recognize this as a representation of some of Maxwell’s Equations. I very much doubt they played a part in the work of  our Economics Professor, so presumably this is just one of the  BBC’s stock of generic “scary maths” images.

Other things worth noting are that this version of Maxwell’s Equations isn’t written in SI units, the standard notation in the UK and Europe. As a matter of fact it uses cgs units, which suggests it may be an American import. Nor is it really correct anyway, because the time derivative inside the brackets should surely be partial.

All of which goes to demonstrate how Mathematics is usually viewed in the media and, by extension, the public at large: like an arcane book written in an incomprehensible  language that should be viewed with suspicion or ridicule by any sensible person.

There is nothing new about this, of course. I’m reminded that in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian Way, Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie was arrested in France on suspicion of being a German spy because the authorities thought his mathematical notes were coded messages of some sort.

In reality, mathematics is the most open and universal language of all and, as such, is a powerful force for human good. Among many other things, quantitative reasoning and proper logic help to defend us against those who lie and distort the facts in order to gain power. Mathematics may not be the easiest language to learn, but it’s well worth the effort, even if you can only master the basics.