2 MARCH 2006
ST. LOUIS - David Krumholtz is not a real mathematician, he just plays one on TV.
1N fact, Krumholtz always hated math, failing algebra twice as a kid. But nowadays he is one of math's best advocates, sending the message to kids and adults alike that math is interesting, important, and worth knowing something about.
As
Charlie Eppes on the TV show Numb3rs, Krumholtz helps his FBI-agent TV brother
solve crimes every Friday night on CBS. The cases are fictional but the math
is real, and Krumholtz is adamant that the equations must be accurate.
"It takes a lot of work to get it right, which is a major concern of mine and the producers -- getting it right," he says. "I don't ever want to just be writing symbols up on the board just because, to most of our lay audience, it looks like math. I want math professors to say it's actually right, it's the formula that applies to what he's talking about."
Math wasn't always so meaningful to Krumholtz, who as a junior high school student had to take Algebra I three times, before finally escaping with a D, he said in St. Louis last month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"I was terrible in math as a kid, absolutely terrible," he said. "I was the kid in the back of the classroom who would cantankerously shout, 'Hey, I don't know how I'll ever use this in real life. How does it apply?'"
And that, he says, is precisely the question that Numb3rs attempts to answer for kids and adults alike across the country.
"We have 14 million viewers a week," Krumholtz points out. "Those viewers span every culture, every age."
He's encountered fans as old as a 90-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy who confided, "My 8-year-old brother hates math but he loves Numb3rs."
While most other TV Shows aim at a narrowly defined target audience -- say, women ages 18-34 -- Numb3rs appeals to the entire smorgasbord of demographic and cultural groups. "We have a very expansive audience," says Krumholtz, "because math is a universal language."
His character, Charlie Eppes, is not exactly the most realistic of mathematicians, though. He is more of a composite of experts in every mathematical subspecialty, from chaos and fractals to game theory and statistical mechanics. Krumholtz himself has begun to appreciate math a lot more than he used to, although he admits that he doesn't always know what he means when he delivers his crime-solving soliloquies on mathematical principles.
"I still don't understand a lot," he says. "I try to understand as much as I can. It's easier for it to be just lines for me than to go on and understand it. But my perspective has changed."
From viewing math as impenetrable and irrelevant, Krumholtz now sees it as an avenue toward understanding life and the world. And he wants to help convey math's importance to the TV-viewing audience. Unlike other TV shows, Numb3rs really does try to offer its audience the opportunity to learn some real math.
"There's no other show like this on television," Krumholtz observes. "There's no other willingness to educate. Unfortunately we seem to be living in an exploitative time to some extent, where the networks just like to throw a lot of stars dancing and stars skating and people making fools of themselves on TV. . . . But there is a huge segment of the population that's interested in learning, learning in prime-time television."
In that regard, the show tries to educate in ways more creative than usually
found in the classic math classroom.
"The problems I had in junior high school," Krumholtz recalls, "were that a teacher would get up in front of the blackboard and write down a bunch of symbols that I couldn't understand, and said, 'Understand them!' And that was all. What we try to do on Numb3rs is we try to visualize the math . . . . As I'm describing it, we show visual applications of the math. That, I feel is what's translated best to the audience, to kids specifically."
In fact, scenes from the show are available on DVD for use by math teachers, thanks to a joint venture between CBS and Texas Instruments. So even kids who don't get to see the show on Friday nights (perhaps because they are watching Monk) can still benefit from Numb3rs.
Beyond the specifics of math, though, the very existence of the show with its illustration of math's significance sends a serious message serving a grander purpose.
"I believe this is a time that it's very important that this country, and really the world, take into account the power and influence of mathematics and science, and so the show couldn't be at a better time," Krumholtz says. "We really are making a difference."
E-mail: tsiegfried@nasw.org
