MATHS TO DIE FOR

~ Posted by Samantha Weinberg, February 16th 2012

There is no immediately obvious link between maths and comedy. Walk along a school corridor and, chances are, there won’t be burbles of laughter seeping out from under the maths-room door. Perhaps that’s one of its problems: while a recent survey of university admissions tutors put A-level maths at the top of their wish list for candidates, there is a growing shortage of British graduates with maths and science degrees. But does the issue lie with a lack of base mathematical ability, or the way it is taught?

Last night, in the spirit of interested enquiry, I took my son Alfie (11, numerate, and still too young to equate success in maths exams with unacceptable geekiness) to see Your Days are Numbered: the Maths of Death. Billed as a comedy show about maths, it’s an Edinburgh-acclaimed two-hander, with Matt Parker (Twitter handle: @standupmaths) and the comedian Timandra Harkness.

The figures start before the show, with a disclaimer form to sign: "I acknowledge that there is a 0.000043% chance that I will die during this show…" and continue to flow, along with gentle laughter, throughout the next two hours. A one-in-a-million chance of dying is called a micromort, we learned: taking one tab of ecstasy involves one micromort of risk, the same as a six-minute canoe trip or smoking one and a half cigarettes. Mark your midlife crisis by buying a farm in Cornwall and you are 100 times more likely to die than if you ditch the wife and buy a sports car.

But statistics, as the likeable Parker pointed out, are damned tricky customers. You can’t add and subtract them (if being a single woman adds a 3% chance to dying early, bigamy doesn’t reduce it by 6%), and if you don’t know the baseline risk attached to an activity, than any reported change is close to meaningless (ie, don’t be suckered by tabloid cancer scares).

And so we learned about statistics, probability, risk analysis and how to work out a cubed root in our heads; maths was instilled in us by stealth and by laughter. At the end of the show, Alfie pronounced himself thoroughly entertained. “More people would think maths was cool if teachers were like him,” he said. Go clone yourself Mr Parker: British industry would thank you.

Samantha Weinberg is assistant editor at Intelligent Life