Back in the early seventies, while living in Aburi, Ghana, I had the opportunity to witness the annual Odwira festival. It was late afternoon and I was sitting next to a gentleman who, easily recognizing a newcomer, was explaining the roles and responsibilities of the many participants in that colorful spectacle. One of the dancers present was a somewhat scruffy individual who my neighbor pointed out, with more than a little embarrassment and the summary judgment, "He will never prosper."
The subject of his disdain turned out to be the official Executioner. Nothing at all like Koko, in the Mikado, but the man who, in accordance with Akuapem tradition, was charged with sacrificing some unfortunate victim should the local chief happen to die. Apparently, the people in our town took their traditions seriously.
Given my own background, plus countless Celtic ancestors, it was inevitable that I would take the occasion to ponder, once again, the origins of cultural differences. I am a scientist and my job, in those days, was to teach science. No surprise, then, that I utilized the symbols I knew best to formulate my thoughts. Thus, my ruminations referenced not sociology or psychology but the more familiar thread connecting ancient Indian and Egyptian mathematical traditions, the rise of Moorish Spain, and the consequent introduction into Europe of the Hindu concept of zero.
The irony, so much from nothing, is impressive. The concept of zero traveled West then North, not South, and with this idea came a new, logarithmic number system. The new numerals facilitated the formalism we call algebra [from the Arabic, al-jabr, "the reduction"] which combined with geometry to yield trigonometry, then calculus. From calculus, indirectly, came the Industrial Revolution and, ultimately, this website. There is no need to trace all of the links; they are well-known.
Meanwhile, in "Darkest Africa," such numeracy was nonexistent. Indeed, even literacy was rare. Which, I admit, may or may not explain why one of the dancers on that sunny Autumn afternoon had so little aesthetic appeal.
Today, as a former professor and citizen of the United States, I must acknowledge an even greater irony. The innumeracy that, in part, kept scientific advancement out of sub-Saharan Africa is nearly as prevalent in my own society as it was, a millennium ago, in Ghana. It has become almost a cliché to observe that, in spite of continual and intimate exposure to a spectrum of ever-accelerating technological advances, the typical American "man-on-the-street" cannot do long division without a calculator and would not know a logarithm from a lollypop. This deficit seems to get worse with each generation and, regrettably, my many years as a teacher suggest that most of the current school-age population would probably prefer the lollypop.
Clearly, this does not bode well for any society, especially one that depends so much on technology. If this downward trend continues, then how shall we ever prosper?
In his book, Full House, Stephen Jay Gould demonstrated that, although the mode of a distribution is, in one sense, representative, it does not constitute the frontier of advancement. Thus, we do not expect Nobel Prizes and symphonies to issue forth from the human equivalent of Gould's modal bacter. We look, instead, to the far right tail of the distribution for such accomplishments. Still, simple courtesy as well as political realities require that an effort be made, if not in education then, at least, in communication.
My point of view, of course, represents only about 1/300,000,000 of the U.S. population but this is, after all, my website. Therefore, I offer this section on Mathematics and Statistics as yet one more attempt to shed a little light on an area undeservedly, and too often, dubbed arcane and irrelevant. Like everything else at this site, it is somewhat idiosyncratic. Also, I have no illusions that it will do much to elucidate a difficult subject and no hope at all that it will, in Robert Heinlein's words, "unscrew the inscrutable."
Nevertheless, enjoy!
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