E-mail this article to a friend | Printer friendly format | Email The Editor

Author John Allen Paulos signs a book for “Math Counts” student, Ben Stewart Tuesday night.

Mathematics and Morgan Hill are not often found in the same sentence. The town’s agricultural past and family-oriented present normally point elsewhere.

This, however, was not the case Tuesday night when nearly 200 Morgan Hill residents found something to do that didn’t involve TV, movies or sports. They came to hear a real mathematician, John Allen Paulos, who packed the Morgan Hill Playhouse for a public talk on his book, “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.”

The lecture on the way numbers influence the news and news consumers, and the reception that followed, were sponsored by the American Institute of Mathematics as a benefit for a middle school math enrichment program called ‘Math Counts.’ The program began last year at Charter School of Morgan Hill and has expanded this year to Oakwood, Britton and Jackson Elementary.

The evening’s program showed mathematician Brian Conrey - AIM’s executive director - reading The Morgan Hill Times. The program’s font was that of the nation’s most famous newspaper, The New York Times.

Quite a few high school students peppered the audience, along with a significant number of adults - both men and women - and even a few elementary and middle school students. Paulos had spoken earlier in the day to three math classes at Live Oak High where, he said, the students listened and asked a goodly number of questions.

Helen Moore, associate director of AIM, and an advocate of drawing more women into mathematics, said quite a few of the teens in the audience were from Presentation High School, a San Jose Catholic high school for young women.

Members of the audience reported more than one reason for coming out on a cold evening to hear about math and the news.

Chris and Bob Thompson said they came to the lecture for information and because they both have a love of mathematics.

“Besides,” Bob said, “we were told Paulos would be entertaining.”

Sitting higher up in the theater, school board trustee Del Foster and his wife, Donna McIntosh, were enjoying an evening out without their four children. McIntosh joked that she wanted to be a statistician “when she grew up.”

Paulos did discuss how statistics can make or break a news story and influence public opinion. His predominant message about how to look at numbers in news stories was a basic one.

“Numbers don’t mean anything (in the news) unless you know where they come from,” he said.

AIM co-founder Steve Sorenson introduced mathematics as “the primary tool of science and engineering” and Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Philadelphia’s Temple University, as a “modern day polymath.”

Merriman-Webster Dictionary describes ‘polymath’ as “a person with encyclopedic learning.”

Sorenson had a word about the AIM lecture series that started in Palo Alto.

“With AIM moving to Morgan Hill,” Sorenson said, “it’s appropriate that the lecture series move too.”

John Fry, of Fry’s Electronics, has built a golf course on Foothill Avenue and plans to renovate the old Flying Lady Restaurant on the grounds into an Alhambra-like building for the AIM, which he founded.

Paulos took the audience “on a random walk through a generic newspaper,” which he does in greater depth in his book. Tuesday the professor told a few of his favorites from the book.

He told the one about the duck. Three statisticians were duck hunting. One shot high; one shot low. The third one cried out, “you got him!”

“Sports statistics are usually the clearest numbers in a newspaper,” he said, not referring to the sport of duck hunting.

Paulos told of “the tyranny of anecdotes”, largely using examples that show how numbers can impose a significant psychological effect on the reader.

The audience had quite a few questions after the talk but, surprisingly, none asked by women even though there were clearly mathematically inclined women present. Paulos said later that this is not unusual at his talks.

“That’s often the case,” he said, “but I don’t know why.”

A reception was held afterward in the community center’s large room, where Paulos signed his books for fans and where Conrey encouraged the town to get behind the “Math Counts” program.

Details: www.aimath.org