New Math - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• Tom Lehrer wrote a satirical song named "New Math" which revolved around the process of subtracting 173 from 342 in decimal and octal. The song is in the style of a lecture about the general concept of subtraction in arbitrary number systems, illustrated by two simple calculations, and highlights the emphasis on insight and abstract concepts of the New Math approach. Lehrer's explanation of the two calculations is entirely correct, but presented in such a way (at rapid speed, with minimal visual aids, and with side remarks thrown in) as to make it difficult for most audience members to follow the rather simple calculations being performed. This is intended to poke fun at the kind of bafflement the New Math approach often evoked when apparently simple calculations were presented in a very general manner which, while mathematically correct and arguably trivial for mathematicians, was likely very confusing to absolute beginners and even contemporary adult audiences. Summing up his opinion of New Math is the final sentence from his introductory remarks to the song: "...in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer;" at one point in the song, he inserts the assertion that 13 – 7 = 5, which is (deliberately) incorrect.

Lehrer stated that "Base 8 is just like Base 10, if you're missing 2 Fingers."

The tagline of the song is "It's so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it."

Lehrer, at the end of the song, said that he often wanted to write a mathematics textbook someday that would be a million seller, entitled "Tropic of Calculus".

• "New Math" was also the name of a 1970s punk rock band from Rochester, NY.

• In The Simpsons episode "Dog of Death", Principal Skinner refers to the New Math:

Kent: But there's already one big winner: Our state school system, which gets fully half the profits from the lottery.
Skinner: Just think what we can buy with that money... History books that know how the Korean War came out. Math books that don't have that base six crap in them!

• In 1965, Charles Schulz authored a series of Peanuts strips which detailed kindergartener Sally's frustrations with the New Math. In the first strip, she is depicted puzzling over "sets, one to one matching, equivalent sets, non-equivalent sets, sets of one, sets of two, renaming two, subsets, joining sets, number sentences, placeholders." At last she bursts into tears and exclaims, "All I want to know is, how much is two and two?"