Mathematics in Popular Culture

By Michael Minas

At the start of the 2018 school year, I realised that I had a major problem on my hands.  One of the first things I did with my new class of year 5/6 students was a getting-to-know-you activity, where they were asked to respond to a range of questions.  To my surprise, when the students were asked “What is one thing you don’t like about school?”, five of the 24 responses were primarily related to mathematics. 

The troubling realisation that almost a quarter of my new class seemed to be disengaged from my favourite subject was later confirmed when I asked the students to complete an attitude to maths survey.  After analysing the results of this survey, I discovered that 21% of my class said that they did not like studying mathematics at school and 25% had a negative self-perception about their ability to do well in the subject.  When the results were split along gender lines, it was even more alarming.  The female students in my class were twice as likely to provide negative responses as their male counterparts when asked whether they enjoyed maths.    

Considering the important role that student mindset plays in influencing learning outcomes, it was clear that these results were of great concern.  I immediately began contemplating what steps I could take to improve my students’ opinion of both the study of numeracy, as well as their view of themselves as capable mathematicians. 

From my own experience, as both a classroom teacher and numeracy coach, I knew that there were two groups of people who were likely to be heavily influencing my students’ view of mathematics- their immediate family members and their teachers.  Fortunately, I had significant control over one of these factors and was also able to somewhat influence the other, via events such as information evenings and parent/teacher meetings. 

However, there is another factor that exerts great influence over students’ perceptions and opinions of mathematics that teachers have little to no influence over- how the subject is presented in the media.  Over the past few years, I have frequently found myself noticing the negative way that maths is portrayed in children’s books, movies and television shows.  When a writer wants to signify that school is boring, the class in question will undoubtedly be studying mathematics.  Or if a director wants the audience to know that a character is awkward or a bit of a social outcast, he (or theoretically she, but as we are about to discover, it is almost always a he) is likely to be interested in maths. 

These representations made me both angry and upset.  Here I was, trying to show my students that maths was a beautiful, exciting, practical subject, one that they could use to help them understand our complex world and yet this message was being drowned out by authors, directors and publishers.  I decided that it was time to take some action.

Media portrayal of mathematics in “the Big Bang Theory”

At the beginning of term one, I set-up a class investigation where students were asked to be on the lookout for examples of mathematics from books, television shows and movies.  Every time a student came across an example, we made note of it on a large class table that was displayed in the room.  If the example was found in a book, the student would read the relevant passage of text to the rest of the class.  If the example came from a movie or a television show, I attempted to find the clip in question so it could be shared (see Figure 1).  After sharing each example, we added to our class table, recording a summary of how the maths was being used and whether we believed it was a positive or negative representation of the field of mathematics.

While I was planning this investigation, I received Jennifer Hall's article summarising her research into Maths and Mathematicians in Children's Media (Hall, 2018), as part of our research-practice collaboration (a current editorial focus of Prime Number).  After reading Jennifer's work, I became more aware of the issues surrounding gender and mathematics in the media, particularly the lack of positive portrayals of girls and women engaging with mathematics.  This prompted me to add an additional column to the table that my class was going to use to record their findings, one that simply made note of the gender of character/s who are using mathematics. 

At the start of the investigation, the students found the process of locating examples of maths being used in the media quite challenging.  This meant that there were large time lags between the discussions we were having after sharing examples, thus making it difficult for the investigation to gather any momentum.  After a few weeks, I began to supplement the examples the students were providing with some of my own and this seemed to be an effective way to get the class to engage with the investigation. 

By the end of the term, students were coming to school with examples to share on a regular basis.This meant that when the investigation concluded, we had almost 30 examples on our class poster.We then used these to look for trends or patterns that the students thought were interesting.

our class table recording media portrayals of mathematics

When I planned this investigation, I had two very simple aims.  I wanted to develop a greater awareness of how mathematics is depicted in popular culture and also improve the critical thinking skills of my students.  Initially, I thought that the negative manner in which mathematics is portrayed in the media would be the focus of the project.  However, as the term progressed, the students became much more concerned about the under representation of female characters using mathematics in a confident, capable manner and how this would impact on the mindsets of other children, especially girls. 

At the end of the investigation, I asked the class to write reflections, including what they would like to see changed about the manner in which mathematics is portrayed in the media.  Here is a selection of their thoughts:

“I noticed there were more negative views on maths.  This would tell primary students that maths isn’t a good subject, only increasing the level of dislike towards maths.”

-Sasha

“I would demand an increase in the number of female mathematicians in the media because a majority of the time, males are performing complicated mathematical equations whilst females struggle to perform basic mathematics.  This sends an internal message to girls, putting their mindset on a downward slope, when the reality is that we all have the same mathematical capability.”

-Doug

“I think some of the TV shows/movies/books could be quite offensive.  Like on ‘Mean Girls’, the contestants said, ‘Choose the girl,’ like they thought girls are incapable.”

-Matthew

“As a girl, it made me think that girls cannot do math and are not good at it but I love maths and boys are not any better at it, just because they are boys.  Anyone can be good at maths if they try hard.”

-Tayla

“I would change how maths is presented because the media are saying how maths is bad.  It influences kids to think maths is a menace and to have a bad attitude to it, which causes noise, disruption and bad behaviour.”

-Nathan

“If I could change one thing, I would tell the authors, directors, producers and game designers to have more female roles.  Being a female myself, I feel quite upset (disappointed) that people think ‘Oh, girls aren’t good enough to do this, or girls aren’t capable of doing that,’ especially in maths.”

-Hope

I believe this investigation was extremely beneficial, as it helped my students understand how the media can influence not only their view of mathematics and how they see themselves as learners, but also their perceptions of the wider world.  I encourage other teachers to undertake a similar type of investigation with their own classes.  It was easy to set-up and once the investigation was established, it did not require very much class time, especially when completed across an entire term.   I also think this experience is a good example of how teachers engaging with research can shape their attitudes and behaviours, which then impacts the student learning experience.

(This article originally appeared in Prime Number- Term 4, 2018.)