Language People vs. Math People
March 29, 2010
The other day I was trying to help our twelve-year-old with her math homework. Here was the problem she had to solve:
Kevin was wallpapering the living room. The pattern of the wallpaper was repeated vertically every 2/3 foot. If the portion being wallpapered was 12 feet tall, how often was the pattern repeated?
I was pretty good at math when I was my daughter’s age, but for the past fifty years the only math problems I’ve actually done are the simple calculations used to balance a checkbook, calculate a tip, or measure the space for a throw rug. Least common denominator, order of operations, imaginary numbers, supplementary angles, equivalent ratios—they’ve all slipped away from me. Simple problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all I’m good for anymore. If the division involves large numbers, though, I get nervous; if decimals are involved, I panic; and the very prospect of multiplying something by 8 gives me stomach cramps.
And so when I was presented with this problem, I was flummoxed. I tried imagining a wall twelve feet tall, and then I imagined a very long yardstick to one side marking off every third of a foot, and then I visualized one pattern ranked above another, but in the mental cross-chatter of my trying to keep count of the number of patterns and the number of 1/3s marks on the yardstick and where I stood in going up the wall, my mind collapsed. Then, I reasoned that since this problem occurred at the end of the chapter, the chapter itself must discuss the mathematical procedures one should use to solve the problem. So, I turned back to the head of the chapter. Dividing by fractions. This gave me the fantods. I hadn’t the slightest idea how to divide by fractions, and the chapter was no help because all it said was that to divide by fractions you multiplied by its reciprocal. So I turned to an earlier chapter to find out what a reciprocal was, and then back to an even earlier chapter to find out how to multiply by fractions . . . .
Meanwhile, my daughter had grown impatient and phoned her uncle. Now, her uncle is a language person like myself, but he uses math more than I do, though he does so in practical ways and for very practical purposes. “Let’s see,” I heard him say over the phone, less to her than to himself. “There are 12 inches in a foot and there are twelve feet, so 12 times 12 is 144.” (Meanwhile, I’m saying in my mind, “The reciprocal of 2/3 is 3/2 and now multiply. . .”) “And 2/3 of a foot are 8 inches . . .” (And I’m thinking, “3 times 12 is 36, divided by 2 . . .”). “. . . And 8 goes into 144 . . .”
“Eighteen!” we both yelled, simultaneously.
And then there was a long pause, for we both saw the ambiguity immediately. “Or maybe it’s 17. The problem says, ‘how often is the pattern repeated?’ There are 18 patterns on the wallpaper, but the first time the pattern occurs, it’s not really a ‘repetition,’ is it? It’s an occurrence followed by 17 repetitions.”
Now, here was a problem I could really sink my teeth in to, and we began talking about what exactly was meant by ‘repetition’ with considerable enthusiasm.
My daughter rolled her eyes.
Barbara walked into the room. “What’s the problem?” she said.
“Language people,” I replied. “You should never let language people around math.”
“To the contrary,” she said as she left the room. “You should never let math people around language.”
–Dennis
Trespasser’s Incident
March 16, 2010
I was on the train last Thursday morning on my way up to NYC for a meeting. The train suddenly made an unscheduled stop just north of Trenton. “The train ahead of us has hit a trespasser,” the Amtrak conductor informed us over the loudspeaker.
It took me a moment to realize that what he meant was that someone had committed suicide by jumping onto the track.
I could hear murmuring among the other passengers and then several of them on their cellphones calling to explain they’d be late for appointments. The word “trespasser” could be heard sprinkled throughout their conversation. I marveled how they adopted the conductor’s phrasing without questioning it.
Trespasser? Sounded like some lawyer’s CYA instructions to their public affairs folks. Let’s sanitize the message and put the liability where it belongs — squarely on the shoulders of the poor soul who flung himself in front of a speeding train. The important thing was not that another human being was in such agony that he would end his life so violently and publicly. No, what matters to the lawyers is that we know whose fault it is.
During my meeting and on the trip back home to Washington that evening I wondered about the back story. Who was he? What drove him to jump? When I got home that night I found a story online which noted that the tragedy was officially called a “trespasser’s incident.” The man’s identity was not yet known, nor his reasons for jumping onto the tracks. I was bothered by the coldness of the word, particularly because the image of the aftermath of the event was stuck in my mind’s eye because I was stupid enough to look out the window as we rolled through the station where the man had jumped.
I wasn’t surprised to find that the phrase has troubled others. Roaming around railfans’ chatrooms, I found a thread where it was debated in conjunction with other train track suicides. Not surprisingly, some expressed sympathy for the deceased and their families, others noted that the word ”trespasser” is accurate because train tracks are private property and it’s trespassing to be on the tracks unless you’re an employee. It reminded me of a letter I got twenty years ago after I a piece of mine ran in the Washington Post Style section. It was an essay about the nature of grief, written on the occasion of my mother’s death. I got a note from a reader who excoriated me for a comma splice. The writer was correct but it would have been nice had she added, “I’m sorry for your loss.” As much as I value grammar and good writing, I value kindness and empathy even more.
–Barbara
When Jupiter Aligns with Mars
March 10, 2010
According to a witty opinion piece in the Post this morning, South Dakota legislators recently called for state schools to take a more balanced approach to teaching about climate change, insisting that “climate change is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact.” Many factors can “effect world weather phenomena,” the legislators opined—including “astrological” ones. While they’re at it, perhaps they should mandate state schools to teach the difference between “affect” and effect” and “astrological” and “astronomical.”
The Ghost Writer: Good Anecdote, Bad Reality
March 8, 2010
“What movie are you going to see tonight?” our 12-year old asked as we were getting ready to leave.
“‘The Ghost Writer,’” I answered. Then added, “It’s about a ghost writer.”
“Yeah, I figured,” she said. “What is it, a horror movie?”
When I finished laughing uncontrollably I realized that judging from my life, that was a natural conclusion for Sasha to come to. What was it Carrie Fisher said? Good anecdote, bad reality?
I was very much looking forward to seeing the film, and I was not disappointed. Roman Polanski has directed a masterpiece. The plot is tight and unpredictable and the atmospherics have that spooky, Hitchcockian thing going on. I am going to be very careful not to give away any of the plot but here’s the premise: a Tony-Blair like character, post-prime ministership, needs a ghostwriter to finish his memoirs after his first ghost ends up dead. The new ghost finds himself in the rarified atmosphere that I know all too well: tiptoeing around the living quarters of a famous person, an outsider, whose very presence embarrasses the “author” and threatens the inner circle. Even the kitchen staff eyes you suspiciously.
Needed but not trusted, the ghost slinks around trying to do his job under really weird circumstances. It’s hard to hold onto one’s self-respect in this role. I groaned audibly when the ghost, upon learning of the p.m.’s wife’s youthful political ambitions, asks her, “Did you ever want to be a proper politician?”
Eyes ablaze she shoots back, “Did you ever want to be a proper writer?”
Ouch. I feel your pain.
Polanski himself an outsider, shows great insight into, even empathy for both the politician and the ghost. At one point, early on, the ghost reports to the p.m.’s assistant that the former p.m., played by Pierce Brosnan, keeps calling the ghost “Man” and he takes it as a term of endearment.
“That’s what he calls people when he can’t remember their name,” she notes. Ah, I remember the invisibility. I know what it feels like to have someone look right through you. Erased as soon as your services are no longer needed. Much later, the ghost, not invited to the book’s launch party, accompanies the assistant as her guest. When she says she is appalled he wasn’t invited, he explains, “It would be like having the mistress attend the wedding.”
The actor who plays the Ghost, Ewan McGregor, nails it. He is hunched over, as if trying to burrow into himself–a demeanor that we ghosts often assume. But in real life he’s much more confident. On “Good Morning America” in an interview promoting the movie, he gives George Stephanoupolos a run for his money. To set up the interview, they air a clip in which the Ghost is subjected to a tense interview with the top brass at the publishing house. He admits that he’s not a politics buff: “I don’t read political memoirs. Who does?”
After the clip airs, Stephanoupolos says lightly, “As someone who has written one I’ll try not to take that personally.”
“You’ve written one?” McGregor shoots back.
“Yes,” Stephanoupolos mumbles, looking shocked that there is anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know his pedigree.
“Come on! How boring is it to write a book about politicians. Really, on a scale of one to 10, 10 right?”
By now Stephanoupolos is squirming and laughing uneasily. “I don’t — no! I wouldn’t think so.”
“I think it’s the antidote to insomnia probably,” McGregor finishes, clearly triumphant. And he is so right. Everyone knows that no one reads these things, at least not closely. In this town the index is the only thing that anyone studies, for one’s own name.
There’s so much more I could say, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the movie for you. Besides, I’m saving some of what I know for my own memoirs. By Barbara Feinman Todd, as told to Barbara Feinman Todd.
