Ben Orlin - Five Way Interview

Ben Orlin loves math and cannot draw. He is the author of several bestselling books: Math with Bad Drawings (2018), the calculus storybook Change is the Only Constant (2019) and the infamously large Math Games with Bad Drawings (2022). He has taught every level of mathematics from 6th grade to undergraduate, and his work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and Popular Science. His latest book is Math for English Majors.

Why math(s)?

My first passion is how people think. (Before I was a math major, I was a psych major!) So I view math, and especially math education, as a magnificent case study in applied psychology.

How do we braid together intuition and logic? How do we move from concrete details to abstract truths? What makes us build identities as 'a math person' or 'not a math person'? Every student I've ever taught had their own irreducible, irreproducible way of thinking about math. Nothing excites me more than learning how students think.

Why this book?

When I talk to mathematicians, they all downplay mathematical language. 'It's about the ideas,' they say, 'not the symbols.' Which is true enough!

But when I talk to writers, they love language. They've got favorite words, accents, etymologies, regional idioms... for them, the language is the raw material of literature, and it's fun to play with.

I wanted to bring that linguistic curiosity to math. Too often, the rules of our language remain invisible -- unspeakably obvious to experts, but unimaginably foreign to novices. This book is aiming to help both experts and novices see the language with new eyes.

Do you think if we were to redesign the language of mathematics from scratch, rather than the piecemeal form it now takes, it would be very different (and if so, how)?

Ooh, that's like pondering how evolution might unfold on an alien planet. The possibilities must be vast, but my imagination falters!

Maybe, freed from the strictures of typesetting, we'd design something more two-dimensional, like the triangle of power (which unifies logs, roots, and exponents) or the alien symbols in Arrival. Or maybe, because we perceive colors so vividly, we'd use them to carry meanings, like in Oliver Byrne's illustrated version of Euclid.

Still, I can only see mathematics through the window of our language. I struggle to envision what it'd look like from another vantage point!

What’s next?

This is my fourth book, and I'm excited to keep writing them. Several ideas are in competition for the next one:

1. A collection of the finest brain teasers that ever teased brains

2. A pilgrimage in search of mathematical beauty

3. True folktales of heroic calculations

4. Life wisdom from a probability-obsessed father (specifically, my father)

I invite readers to weigh in on the options! I am so suggestible and easily swayed that with sufficient pestering and flattery you can probably get me to write a book of your choice.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

My eldest is starting kindergarten; my youngest is starting to say her sister's name; I'm designing a new class on financial and civic mathematics; and less than 24 hours after typing these words, I'll be at the Minnesota State Fair eating grilled corn. In short: exciting times!

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Interview by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here