I'm Alan Alda and this is Clear In Vivid Conversations About Connecting and Communicating.

Sometimes in our conversations on the show, we dig deeply into things we don't have time

to include in the episode itself, but that we'd still like to share with you.

This is one of those times.

If you listen to the conversation I had with my longtime friend Steven Strogetz, you'll

know that my fascination with mathematics is not well matched with my ability to actually

do mathematics.

In fact, there's no match at all.

Over the years, I've tried many times with Steve's help to arrive at some idea of what's

going on in math.

We can get a rough idea of other complex studies like physics and biology, but for me,

math, sometimes called the language of nature, is tucked away in a heavy, thick book with

a lock on it and titles forget about it.

So I thought it would be fun if Steve could get me to grasp at least one of those math

terms that many of us have heard about, but that most of us don't really get.

You can judge for yourself if we were successful.

I want to ask you something that I have often asked you in our conversations, like this

that we've had over the years.

When you help me understand something, anything about something that I've heard about for

many years, but don't really have a clear understanding of.

For instance, the quadrilateral equation is supposed to be, is very common in science,

and I don't know how it works.

...