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Random Sampler
Politics and Mathematics
by Charles L. McClenahanGeorges Clemenceau (1841-1929) said that "war is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military." Trained as a physician but also an accomplished politician, journalist, and teacher, Clemenceau never served in the military. While it is generally accepted that the decision to declare war is inherently political, not military, I believe that once declared, war is much too serious a matter not to be entrusted to the military. Imagine the Battle of the Bulge being fought based upon tactical decisions of the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament. When politicians get involved, somehow knowledge, experience, and expertise seem to become unimportant.
In 1897, House Bill No. 246, "A bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth," was unanimously passed by the Indiana House of Representatives. Before passage, the bill had been reviewed by the Committee on Canals (also called the Committee on Swamp Lands) and the Committee on Education. The bill, which among other things implied four different values for pi and one for the square root of 2 (all wrong), died in the Senate only because of disagreement as to whether Dr. Edwin Goodman, the author of the underlying method for squaring the circle, should be allowed to collect royalties for the use of his discovery.
More recently, examples such as California's Proposition 103 and 1996 electricity industry "deregulation" experiment have demonstrated that the "will of the people" is no match for underlying mathematical principles.
In October 2000, the American Academy of Actuaries released an analysis of Governor Bush's and Vice President Gore's proposals for Social Security and Medicare finding that they were both "incomplete, potentially misleading," and that they "leave many questions unanswered." Candidate Gore, as quoted in USA Today (November 2, 2000) stated that "the American Academy of Actuaries looked at his [Bush's] plan and concluded it would lead to catastrophic results."
In the parlance of Washington's "baseline budget process" any program receiving a lower-than-baseline increase is referred to as being "cut." Social Security contributions, which are spent almost as soon as they arrive, are part of a "trust fund," and income tax cuts are characterized as "spending" while increases are "revenue enhancements."
Whether the near-total disregard for the concept of mathematical truth is simply a matter of political convenience or whether it arises from the nonjudgmental view of mathematics embodied in the U.S. Department of Education's recommended math programs, I say enough is enough. It is time to take our subject back from the "2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2" crowd.
For any one of us, about half of the political missapplications of mathematics tend to support positions we favor. This disparity of political interest should not keep us from railing against such prevarication. The truth should be more important than political capital.
Mathematics is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the politicians.