PROFESSOR INTRIGUED BY MEDIA DEPICTIONS OF MATHEMATICIANS

Kasman offers different ways to view his archive.  If you view it chronologically, you'll go as far back in tim to 414 BC where you'll find "The Birds," a Greek play by Aristophanes.  The listings run all the way to 2004 where you can learn about a more modern Greek play, Apostoles Dopxiadis' "Incompleteness."  A look at 2003's listings finds "Unreasonable Effectiveness," a story by Alex Kasman himself.  "It's difficult for me to describe this work objectively, because it is my first published story," Kasman coyly writes in his description of the story he wrote that was first published in Math Horizons magazine.

"There are lot's of books, films, and stories that portray a negative view of  mathematics and those it involves," Kasman said during a recent interview. "But I know mathematicians who are emotional about it, and find it beautiful and important." 

One recent high profile negative depiction of mathematicians, according to Kasman, was the Academy Award-winning "A Beautiful Mind" starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ron Howard. On his website, Kasman writes, "Although the book 'A Beautiful Mind:  A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr.' is not fictional, Ron Howard's film (released December 2001) most certainly is. (I say this not as a complaint, but just to justify its inclusion on the list.) That it was fictionalized for the film does not bother me. In fact, I like the inclusion of the fictional 'twists' that make the audience share in the character's delusions. However, I am bothered by the fact that the film chooses to present us with the dangerous media stereotype of the eccentric mathematician rather than taking on the more difficult task of trying to convey the real story of John Nash and the role that mental illness has played in his life.

"One of the reasons that I have become interested in mathematical fiction is that it actually shapes the opinions of the general public regarding mathematics and mathematicians," Kasman continues. "For instance, a neighbor mentioned that she thought of me when she saw this film. 'Now,' she said to me, 'I have a better idea of how your mind works.'  Don't forget that this is a film about a man so crazy that he must be forceably hospitalized and almost drowns his own baby! The clear implication of the movie, as these comments make perfectly clear, is that anyone who is good at doing math must be completely crazy. Although some of the scenes in the film were well done, I cannot forgive it for reinforcing this dangerous stereotype. Moreover, I thought that the lack of subtlety in this film was an insult to the audience."

With his website Kasman is able to spotlight media presentations that he feels foster such stereotypes.  With it, he can protect his profession but the site is really about promoting it.  It is a catalogue of novels, plays, short stories, comic books, motion pictures and television from around the world with the common thread being math and/or mathematicians being prominent in the storyline.  And he has found an audience, as evident by the site's nearly 150,000 visitors since May 2000. 

Again donning his film critic/mathematician hat, Kasman takes aim, on his website, at a 2001 Australian film, "The Bank":  "A brilliant young mathematician (aren't they all!) uses chaos theory to develop a mathematical model that predicts the stock market in this Australian thriller (co-produced by Axiom Films)," Kasman writes.  "I love the opening scene in which the we see the hero as a young boy. A bank representative visits his class at school and tries to explain the importance of retirement investments to a bunch of 10 year old kids. The idea of interest is explained (explicitly, including the general exponential formula). The young actor does a great job of looking as if a light has gone on in his head...he gets it!  

"In most other ways, I'm afraid, the film struck me as relatively mediocre. The professional critics seem to have given it good write ups, but it just wasn't to my tastes. Of course, it was nice that the hero was a mathematician and gets to babble about things like fractals, but I'm one of the few people in the world who would consider that to be an especially wonderful thing in itself. Most other people will look for acting, direction and (mostly) an interesting plot. The acting and direction were both okay, but not at all inspired. The movie attempts to surprise with 'plot twists,' but these twists had very low curvature. (That's my mathematical way of saying 'I could see them coming a mile off.')...The idea that chaos theory will allow us to predict the stock market shows up commonly in mathematical fiction, it seems. Allow me to point out a problem with this idea. Chaotic systems are sensitively dependent upon initial conditions. So, you need to know everything about the state it is in now in order to be able to say what will happen next. Since there are always lots of things we don't know about the people who are affecting the stock market (traders, investors, etc.) if it really were found to be a chaotic dynamical system in the mathematical sense, there would be no practical way it could be predicted effectively. (Sorry!)"

Kasman has even found a way to mix his career with his hobby in a special topics honors course called, you got it, Mathematical Fiction.  In it, literature, cinema and math converge.   "There is some math that is still done though along with the literary part, some students do not like that part of the class, " Kasman says of the course he plans to offer again in 2005. 

When not maintaining and updating his unique website, Kasman is teaching calculus, linear algebra and statistics at the College of Charleston.  His professional research is done, as he puts it, on the "boundary" between mathematical physics and algebraic geometry.

For more information about Dr. Alex Kasman, please visit his website at:  http://math.cofc.edu/kasman/

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