39 Jordan Ellenberg - Why Math Is The Ultimate BS Detector

Inquiring Minds

Science, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Female Host, Interview, Social Sciences, Critical Thinking

4.4 • 848 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2014

⏱️ 49 minutes

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Summary

Chances are that when you think about math—which, for most of us, happens pretty infrequently—you don't think of it in anything like the way that Jordan Ellenberg does. Ellenberg is a rare scholar who is both a math professor (at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and a novelist. And in his fascinating new book, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, he deploys analyses of poetry, politics, and even religion in a bold recasting of what math is in the first place.For Ellenberg, the stuff you hated about math in high school isn't the core of the thing. He's emphatic that mathematics isn't simply about the calculations involving, you know, numbers; rather, it's a highly nuanced approach to solving problems that we all, unavoidably, encounter. Ellenberg's chapters range from showing how mathematical thinking undermines many popular proofs for the existence of God (Paley's design argument, Pascal's wager), to explaining how math helps us understand why smoking causes lung cancer (contrary to claims by one early statistician who actually argued that the causation might be reversed—that lung cancer might cause smoking!).On the show this week we talked to Ellenberg about his book, and math: why you’re probably thinking about it all wrong, and why it’s so powerful.This episode also features a short interview with Tasneem Raja, author of the must-read new article "We Can Code It: Why computer literacy is key to winning the 21st century" in Mother Jones, and a discussion of new findings about autism and possibly how to stop it—by making brain cells better able to communicate with one another.iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943RSS: feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-mindsStitcher: stitcher.com/podcast/inquiring-mindsSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Friday, June 20th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Chris Mooney.
0:06.2	And I'm Indravis Gontas. Each week we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.
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0:34.6	This episode is sponsored by Audible.com, a leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment with over 150,000 titles to choose from.
0:44.3	And they have a great offer for Inquiring Minds listeners, a free audiobook. Yes, totally free. To get it, just go to Audiblepodcast.com slash inquiring minds. Again, that's audiblepodcast.com
0:58.3	slash inquiring minds. So, Indrae, you know when you pick up a book and it turns out that it is way
1:04.7	more profound than you thought it would be? I mean, it's a rare occurrence, but has that ever happened
1:08.8	to you? Yeah, but usually it's for novels, like,
1:11.3	you know, George R. Martin, for example, or Donna Finches, sorry, Donna Tarts, the Goldfinch
1:17.7	recently. But right now I'm actually reading a Stephen King novel about a guy who travels back in
1:22.0	time to prevent JFK's assassination, and it's blowing my mind. In all seriousness, it's this cool premise that does away
1:28.6	with the need to invent a time travel device, and instead the protagonist stumbles upon a wormhole.
1:34.2	So how's that for a tangent? Yeah, totally. Well, I have a nonfiction equivalent because that's
1:39.1	what happened with the book that's at the center of this week's show. The book is called
1:43.2	How Not to Be Wrong,
1:44.6	The Power of Mathematical Thinking. It's by Jordan Ellenberg. He is a math professor
1:49.8	at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's a novelist, so that's an interesting blend.
1:53.9	He's also the author of the occasional do-the-math column at Slate, so people might have read him
1:58.4	there. And so this book actually really, wow, I went
2:02.5	into it thinking, you know, this will probably help me understand some math a little better,
	...

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