By: Jessica K. Sklar (Editor), Elizabeth S. Sklar (Editor)

Paperback

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Although mathematics has long been considered an arcane, inaccessible discipline, it has maintained a surprising presence in popular media for over a century. In recent years, the movies Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind, and Stand and Deliver, the stage plays Breaking the Code and Proof, the novella Flatland, and the hugely successful TV crime series NUMB3RS all weave mathematics prominently into their storylines. Less obvious but pivotal references to the subject appear in the blockbuster TV show Lost, the cult movie The Princess Bride, and even Tolstoy's War and Peace. In this compendium, contributors consider the role of math in everything from blockbuster films, baseball, crossword puzzles, fantasy role-playing games, and television shows to science fiction tales, award-winning plays, and classic works of literature. Revealing the broad range of intersections between mathematics and mainstream culture, this collection demonstrates that even "mass entertainment" can have a hidden depth.

Acknowledgments	p. vi
Foreword	p. 1
Introduction	p. 3
The Game
A Survey of Fictional Mathematics in Literature	p. 9
"You Never Said Anything about Math": Math Phobia and Math Fanaticism in the World of Lost	p. 27
What's in a Name? The Matrix as an Introduction to Mathematics
Mapping Contagion and Disease, Catastrophe and Destruction: Computer Modeling in the Epidemiological Disaster Narrative	p. 55
Fair and Unfair Division in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon	p. 71
Game Theory in Popular Culture: Battles of Wits and Matters of Trust	p. 86
Coming Out of the Dungeon: Mathematics and Role-Playing Games	p. 99
Playing Moneyball: Math and Baseball	p. 114
A Mathematician Does the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle	p. 123
The Players
XKCD: A Web of Popular Culture	p. 137
Counting with the Sharks: Math-Savvy Gamblers in Popular Culture	p. 148
Stand and Deliver Twenty Years Later	p. 163
Smart Girls: The Uncanny Daughters of Arcadia and Proof	p. 172
Mean Girls: A Metamorphosis of the Female Math Nerd	p. 187
The Mathematical Misanthrope and American Popular Culture	p. 198
Alan Turing: Reflecting on the Life, Work, and Popular Representations of a Queer Mathematician	p. 219
Mat(t)h Anxiety: Math as Symptom in Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting	p. 233
Math + Metaphor
Thinking Outside the Box: Application Versus Discovery in Saw and Cube	p. 247
Tolstoy's Integration Metaphor from War and Peace	p. 258
"We'll all change together": Mathematics as Metaphor in Greg Egan's Fiction	p. 265
Truth by the Numbers: Mysticism and Madness in Darren Aronofsky's ¿	p. 274
Flatland in Popular Culture	p. 288
Discovering a Higher Plane: Dimensionality and Enlightenment in Flatland and Diaspora	p. 304
Projective Geometry in Early Twentieth-Century Esotericism: From the Anthroposophical Society to the Thoth Tarot	p. 314
Appendices
Mathematics in Performance Media	p. 333
Mathematics in Fiction and Poetry	p. 334
About the Contributors	p. 337
Index	p. 341
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9780786449781
ISBN-10: 0786449780
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 345
Published: 31st May 2012
Dimensions (cm): 25.4 x 17.8  x 2.8
Weight (kg): 0.612