Don't cross the math club! No, really. Don't do it. NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin found that out today (to the power of zero over zero, thankyouverymuch) via a letter from several members of L.A.'s "Math Club," who took issue with "All Things Considered" contributor Lori Gottleib's characterization of the group.

The Math Club members, whose motto is "Be there and be square," think Gottleib's piece is a far cry from asymptotically approaching reality. Yes, the math puns will continue. For starters, they're described as a group of Hollywood screenwriters, and while there are a lot of writers in the bunch - 31 out of 86, or 36.04651% - there are also professors, computer programmers, actors, designers, journalists, and documentarians (as per their website).

The group also complained that Gottleib misidentified a female professor as a male (oh sure, like female mathematicians don't have enough to contend with in the faculty lounge!), said she was laughed at for getting an answer wrong (she wasn't) and claimed that she wasn't invited back (she was).

I wasn't at the math club meeting, but I had always liked math, and factorials had always seemed so happy. I figured that the fairest thing to do would be to listen to Gottleib's piece and hear for myself. I have to say, she does seem to have a chip on her shoulder as she asks "I mean, how many Hollywood types still knew the quadratic formula?"

Well, as it turns out, 86 of them, at least - and that's where I'm guessing Ms. Gottleib's membership in the lowest common denominator became apparent, at least to her. "In school, I used to be considered the hard-core math chick, but here I seemed to be a mere dilettante with a Texas Instruments s36-X poket calculator." She describes a lecture pegged on watching a Simpsons episode, which might have helped me not "perform below my potential" in Mr. Renzetti's class, but which she makes sound very intellectually forbidding and inhospitable. Driving away in a huff, she finds self-worth in an equation of her own making:

Exclusivity + humiliation x competition-to-the-power-of-infinity all divided by my self esteem does not equal fun. It just makes me feel like a big, fat zero.

And that's how Fishbowl's own inner defensive geek sees it. Read the letter after the jump.

The Tricky Intricacies of an Adult Math Club [NPR]

Related, for your edification and enjoyment:
Behold! The first 999 factorials
Quadratic equation calculator
Fermat's Theorem (or, as I like to call it, "Something I Can Prove In My Sleep")

July 14, 2005

Jeffrey A. Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
635 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001

Mr. Dvorkin,

Lori Gottlieb's commentary "The Tricky Intricacies of an Adult Math
Club," which aired Wednesday, July 6th, presents a high concentration of provably false statements offered as facts. As organizer of math club, I think All Things Considered should air a correction of the many errors of the piece. These claims can be demonstrated by a tape recording of the meeting.

1. Ms. Gottlieb asserts, "But when the professor said something
about Fermat's theorem and I yelled out the wrong answer, they
laughed at me." Neither did Ms. Gottlieb yell anything out, nor did anyone laugh at her.

2. Ms. Gottlieb adds, "... he asked what would happen to the sum
of the squares of the sides of a triangle in relation to the
hypotenuse if you placed it on a globe and then moved the triangle
closer to the equator..." The person speaking about this matter was, in fact, Dr. Sarah J. Greenwald, a female professor, and not a "he."

3. Upon closing, Ms. Gottlieb laments, "I knew I wouldn't be
invited back to math club." I emailed Ms. Gottlieb both a save-the-date and an invitation to the June 5th meeting.

4. In the story's introduction, Michele Norris describes math club
as a place where "Hollywood script writers meet monthly to do math
problems." Math club isn't a gathering of "Hollywood script wrtiers." Out of 86 people on the email list, 31 are writers.

These and numerous other fallacies are documented by the audio
recording of the event and can be verified. If NPR airs mostly
fabricated first person narratives, it should introduce them with a
disclaimer stating so. However, if this factual-error glutted piece
does not adhere to your editorial policy, then a correction should be
aired.

Thank you,

Roni Brunn

and

Ethan Goldstine
Brenda Hsueh
Ken Keeler, Ph.D.
Kirsten Roeters
Amber Rosin, Ph. D.
Tami Sagher
Ron Weiner

www.math-club.com