Do Androids Dream of Symmetric Sheaves?: And Other Mathematically Bent Stories by Colin Adams

Author:Colin Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031314919
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

C. AdamsDo Androids Dream of Symmetric Sheaves?https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31491-9_23

23. Silence of the Lemmas

Colin Adams1

(1)Department of Mathematics, Williams College, Williamstown, USA

Dr. Lecture: Hello, Clarice.

Clarice: Hello, Dr. Lecture.

Dr. Lecture: I have been looking forward to seeing you again, Clarice. You know how much I enjoy our conversations.

Clarice: You know why I am here, Dr. Lecture.

Dr. Lecture: I do. You want me to help you catch Bison Burt. He has been wreaking havoc on the mathematical community. You would like to lock him up in a Maximum Security Math Prison. Perhaps even this one.

Clarice: Yes, Dr. Lecture.

Dr. Lecture: Perhaps I could help you, and you could give me something in return.

Clarice: What could I possibly give you, Dr. Lecture? You know I can’t get you out of jail.

Dr. Lecture: I am not asking for that.

Clarice: Then what?

Dr. Lecture: I want you to tell me a story. A story about yourself. What happened to you?

Clarice: What do you mean?

Dr. Lecture: I think you know what I mean.

Clarice: What?

Dr. Lecture: What is 28, Clarice?

Clarice: What, why it’s it’s . uh, I don’t feel well.

Dr. Lecture: A touch of math anxiety, Clarice?

Clarice: Okay, yes.

Dr. Lecture: Tell me why you break into a sweat any time you are confronted by mathematics.

Clarice: And if I tell you, you will help me?

Dr. Lecture: Yes.

Clarice: Okay. It was from when I was a child. My father was a high school math teacher, and sometimes he would take me to class with him. Algebra mostly. I was too young to understand the topics.

Dr. Lecture: Yes?

Clarice: Yes, and sometimes he would ask a student to get up in front of the class, at the blackboard. There was this one time he got this young girl up there. Her name was Dottie. She seemed so exposed. So helpless.

Dr. Lecture: Yes.

Clarice: And then he told her to do a problem at the board. A problem in front of the whole class. Some kind of algebra problem, involving trains.

Dr. Lecture: Yes.

Clarice: And she looked so defenseless up there, and she started to sweat, and he kept after her.

Dr. Lecture: Yes.

Clarice: And she didn’t know what to do. She looked beseechingly at the other students in the classroom. But the other students wouldn’t help at all. They laughed. Laughed while this student this sacrificial lamb made a fool of herself. And then my father mocked her. Mocked her in front of the entire class. And the student, poor Dottie, she started to cry.

Dr. Lecture: Yes.

Clarice: When I go to sleep at night, I can still hear her crying crying for help but nobody helps her. I could never forgive my father for that.

Dr. Lecture: Thank you, Clarice.That was an excellent story. And now, I will tell you what you need to know about Bison Burt. He is not motivated by hatred. He is motivated by fear.

Clarice: What do you mean by fear?

Dr. Lecture: He is like you, Clarice. He fears mathematics, much as you do. Only he fears it in a more dangerous way.

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