Periodically the God of Maths-Whizz receives Google email alerts about the world of maths. These tell him who is blogging, posting comments, writing news and press releases with ‘maths’ mentioned somewhere.
It has come to the attention of the God of Whizz that ‘maths’ or ‘math’ is a word too often used in anger than in scientific or mathematical description. It has become an epithet, almost.
Invariably, if a blogger, or news opinion writer, disagrees with a particular policy statement or bill the reader will be encouraged to ‘do the math’ or, less frequently, ‘do the maths’. By ‘doing the math’ the reader will – inevitably, it is assumed – see the folly of whatever policy/bill/etc. the writer is critiquing.
‘Doing the math’ is an especially popular pastime for critics of tax or government expenditure policies. Whether you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with those policies is besides the point, because – as the God of Whizz righteously declaims – ‘math’/'maths’ is brought down by all this.
Why is this? Mathematics is a beautiful, abstract, science. As we’ve often pointed out, without maths, many of the fundamental scientific, economic and engineering principles on which we daily rely would be either still hidden to us, or at least staggeringly opaque.
But this does not make maths an objective arbiter of truth. Maths is a means, not an end, and many mathematical tools are only as good as their sensible application. If I use a perfectly good statistical method that nevertheless obscures the actual distribution of my data, then I have no more found the ‘truth’ using maths than if I had drawn a pretty picture that I felt best described my emotions doing my research.
Without batting on too much about this, it is fair to say that ‘doing the math’ is often only as rigorous or objective as the person doing it. If, by doing the maths, you purposefully exclude key information, or you make certain bad assumptions, you have misused the maths to make a personal/political/social point that fits your agenda.
You would be better off being honest about your moral or emotional impetus, or hedging your remarks. The problem with this is that simple thinkers like bold statements – cautious, careful commentators who understand the need for balance are often ignored, or derided. The God of Whizz bets one of his (many) arms that mathematicians are not in the habit of being as bold in their claims as those who purport to understand and apply the maths from a political or social standpoint.
And that – says the God of Whizz – is not good! The God of Whizz instead exhorts us all simply to respect good methods, clear thinking, and keep an open mind when the boundaries between maths and opinion seem to blur.
As an aside, he encourages us all to sign up our children to Maths-Whizz, so they are less likely to make the same mistakes that we do…