Leaders in Mathematical Thinking Sarah Greenwald - Connecting Interests

>> I continue to be amazed at just how interested my students are at anything connected to Hollywood, in the U.S. And so they find out that there's a theorem named after me in the Futurama universe, and that I've done some work with the writers of the show. And they just are so interested, and want to talk to me about that. So I keep thinking that as time goes on, especially because Futurama has ended its run, that they will be less interested. But if anything, they seem more interested, I guess because of these streaming websites. I was using Futurama and The Simpsons in my classroom, and part of my job is to share and have my work externally validated. So I wrote papers, I spoke at conferences, like OAME. And from there, that got the attention of the writers of the shows, and they asked if I'd come speak to them about my work. And eventually, this led to them first helping me with my own website. They granted, graciously, interviews , so we have lots of information about their own motivations in the show. And then eventually, they invited me to come film on the Fox Studio lot. So there's about 30 minutes of me on a Futurama DVD as a special feature, talking about the mathematical moments in that show. And then as a special surprise, they gave me my own theorem in the show. So my last name is Greenwald, and it's the Greenwald in Theorem. And as I said, my students just -- I mean, as a fan, I was thrilled to be a small, tiny part of the show, to have my name up in the lights. It's not 15 minutes of fame, it was point five seconds of fame. But for my students, that has gone on and resonated with them. There are moments in the show related to numbers and counting, so things that one could bring into, say, kindergarten, if they wanted to, up through research -level mathematics. So what was so interesting talking to the writers was that they took time away from script writing to actually work on some of the mathematics. So I did a little consulting to help them with a little bit of the mathematical moments in the show. But mostly it came from them, and so that was really interesting to read, that if you love mathematics but love something else at the same time, in my case I love mathematics, but I also love watching TV and movies, and you never know what exciting things you can do to parlay your interests together. I used to be told to not spend all my time watching TV, but little did I know that would turn into something wonderful, when combined with mathematics. In the case of the writers, they took their continued interest in mathematics, even though they're writing professionally for these shows, and shared it by putting in all sorts of interesting moments. And some of that was to take a break. So the Futurama folks would talk about, "Oh, well, we let everybody else go on break, while we tried to prove a theorem about this." That either made it into the plot or it didn't. They said they just put it in for their own use. They thought maybe some fans might notice it, but they really seem to appreciate that we've taken it to another level, and helped our students engage mathematics with it. And I was just impressed and amazed at that continued connection to mathematics on their part. And their love of mathematics comes through in the shows. The Simpsons has had some of the same writers that have significant mathematics in their backgrounds work for them, so people with PhDs and master's degrees in mathematics. So they naturally put in some mathematical moments. It's not as often as Futurama, so you have to watch more carefully. And we have an educational website, SimpsonsMath.com, everything is freely available. So we have a guide to the references on the show as well as interviews with the writers. And again, there are some wonderful moments connected to all sorts of interesting topics, such as, say, the Pythagorean Theorem that we regularly teach in our classrooms. So I've been to a number of table reads for The Simpsons, and those have been a lot of fun to watch the first time the voice actors are reading together the script, and a little bit about that process of how they work on the show. And then for the feature that I created, they set up on the Fox Studio lot a classroom environment. So it was me, some of the writers, some math club members, and then some cartoon characters all together in this made-up classroom environment. Lisa, even though she's a second grader in the show, she often has some pretty significant math references. She is quite intelligent and very interested in all sorts of different topics, not just mathematics. But there was a recent show called "Mathlete's Feet," and in that, Lisa's on a math team, and they're working on all sorts of interesting algebraic and geometric problem solving to try and win the mathlete contest. And I contrast that with Homer, who's the bumbling father of the titular clan. And on the other hand, he also has some significant math references that connect to him. Sometimes it's while he's bumbling around, there'll be an equation in the background. And some of the funnier moments, I think, are really surrounding Homer, even though there's very interesting mathematics related to Lisa also.