Fuddland
An out-of-the-ordinary message was forwarded to the members of the maths department today; rather than being the usual notice about some seminar or other, this was from a London-based PR company, with a proposal.
Apparently, this Christmas Amazon want to run a marketing campaign based around a “formula for how to wrap the perfect Christmas present”. Since I would think it’d be much more newsworthy them having knowledge of what the perfect Christmas present is—the one gift that no-one has but everybody wants—I’m sure they don’t mean what they’ve said, but in fact want a formula for the best way of wrapping a Christmas present [most efficient use of paper, or something]. So they want to pay a mathematician, or mathematicians, to come up with a plausible equation—that is, something that actually works.
In the message the company admit that they’re not after serious research, but just want to use it as a marketing device, and already a couple of members of the department have voiced their opinions on what a waste of time this type of thing generally is. Every time the media report on things like the equation for happiness or solving the formula to find the most stressful Christmas shopping day [last year’s Amazon-commissioned project], there’s a collective shrug of indifference from the vast majority of people, as yet another attempt to demonstrate how amazing maths can be at solving real-world problems gets lost because the reports always have to put the equation front and centre—the obscure; complex-looking; impenetrable equation—rather than make a decent attempt to explain the concept without resorting to symbols.
Maths seems to be the exception that proves the rule of the wider problem of how the media generally fails to report scientific stories in any kind of sensible way; they focus on what they think will grab the reader’s attention, but refuse to go any deeper.
Why? Because papers think you won’t understand the “science bit”, all stories involving science must be dumbed down, leaving pieces without enough content to stimulate the only people who are actually going to read them - that is, the people who know a bit about science. Compare this with the book review section, in any newspaper. The more obscure references to Russian novelists and French philosophers you can bang in, the better writer everyone thinks you are. Nobody dumbs down the finance pages. Imagine the fuss if I tried to stick the word “biophoton” on a science page without explaining what it meant. I can tell you, it would never get past the subs or the section editor. But use it on a complementary medicine page, incorrectly, and it sails through.
But maths stories are dumbed-down by making things appear more complicated than they truly are, by starting with the equation and working backwards to explain what each part means, turning off the reader from the very beginning. If anyone does end up taking on the challenge, this will be another one of these cases: everyone will look at the equation, writ large in the headline if Amazon’s plan has gone ahead, and think, “How the hell does that tell me how to wrap a pot plant?”
[To which the answer is, obviously, p - α/γ ≤ W(p) ≤ γp2 - α.]
Comments
Mark | 2005 / 09 / 22 – 08:22
Great! I hope this goes ahead. It should drive some search engine traffic to the gift-wrapping article I wrote in June.
Ballyhoodom! | 2005 / 09 / 24 – 04:44
Got here via Lasadh.
Yeah, why do guys think Asian girls are so hot? Seriously? What’s that about. And no, for myself and my friends, it is not the same in reverse. Asian guys are usually seriously short with acne. Not in the least impressive.
Anyway, enjoyed looking over your site. Happy trails!
David | 2005 / 09 / 24 – 16:37
Re #2: Ooh, off-topic racial stereotyping, just what I’ve always wanted!
Sherri | 2005 / 09 / 24 – 16:45
Um…Ballyhoodom? David is probably wondering what the hell you’re talking about.
I suggest re-reading my comments section from Monday’s Reader Poll and either posting your thoughts there, or directing them at the person who made the original comment and raised the question regarding people of Asian descent.
Thanks.
Sorry David. ;-)
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