The Case for Math in Writing Classes
In September of 2017, Jessan Jishu wrote an article for Tech-Based Teaching titled “The Case for Writing in Math Classes.” In his post, he points out the common misconception of STEM and the liberal arts as being diametric fields, and explains that there are significant benefits to incorporating writing into math courses. While the monotony of solving repetitious problems builds adeptness at this sort of inquiry, doing so can often suffocate creativity and, potentially, critical thinking.
Confronted by a writing prompt, math students cannot operate by an algorithm of sequential equations. Instead, they must both solve problems and describe thought processes. Doing so comes with some great benefits, as Jishu points out, including students being able to practice articulating their thoughts and collaborating with their peers — both things that engineers, data scientists and most others who relish the hard sciences often struggle with.
That said, I believe this deficit is reflexive. While mathematics needs to incorporate more communication and free rein of expression into its instruction, writing and other liberal arts fields could also benefit from incorporating more mathematics.
A great creation deserves great communication so that others can understand why it matters.
Mathematics is not solely equations and numbers or variables and functions. It’s a method of describing relationships in a purer form than sentential writing.
Mathematics expresses connections between elements and sets, and it creates a common tool belt of operations so that anyone familiar with the tools inside can observe and understand how those connections were developed, or likewise find a final project and be able deconstruct it.
Words and sentences have so many meanings, each carrying different effects and weights for different people. The clearest writing can still cause confusion between two readers. Although two people might both use English, there will still be a persistent translation of nuance.
The operations of mathematics create a common language. Imagine moving to a foreign country and becoming a construction worker. You might not speak the same language as your coworkers, but if you all share the same set of tools, you can watch when someone uses a hammer and see how they swing it, or when they decide to use a screwdriver or a chisel.
With shared knowledge, you might be untrained, but you are not lost.
In one of my classes, Science Fiction and Philosophy, my professor was leading a discussion on the teletransportation paradox. If you’re unfamiliar with the idea, it is a thought experiment that challenges personal identity by supposing you are destroyed and then perfectly reconstructed, atom by atom, in a faraway transporter. Is that new person you? Did you die?
In another iteration, it supposes that the machine malfunctions. A perfect copy of you is made at the other transporter, but the machine fails to destroy your initial self. If you said before that the new person is you, then what qualm should you have with the staff now claiming they need to get rid of this leftover body?
The class was in an uproar, shouting about it being murder or perfectly fine. “That’s the real you!” “No, it’s not!” The professor reclaimed order and started asking individual students for their thoughts. As each person tried to explain their opinion, it was obvious we were getting nowhere.
One person would describe their evaluation. While a few students would nod in agreement, an equal number would scrunch up their faces and tilt their heads in confusion. Every explanation meant something to someone, but no explanation meant something to everyone.
I realized that if we were ever to find some sort of common ground, we would have to establish a common language.
When I was called on, I went to the front of the room, grabbed a marker and drew a series of Cartesian planes, labeling the x axis “time” and the y axis “location”.
I asked the class if they remembered the definition of a function. Some people chuckled and said my question was completely irrelevant. I asked again, and they said they did.
“Suppose that a person is this dot. Time passes, and they can change location, moving horizontally and dipping up and down. This curve represents that person’s life. Notice that the curve can never overlap itself vertically because no individual can be in two places at once.
“I believe that a person’s identity is a continuous function. There can never be two outputs (locations) for one input (time). Any time this curve is broken — even if there is always an output for an input, such as when this first curve has a hollow point overlapped by a filled point above it from this second curve — that identity is broken.”
The class was silent for a while, and then began discussing again. But this time there was a common language.
People started drawing their own graphs, and by the end of the session, we had split into two camps. Everyone agreed that identity is a function, but some people thought it could be continuous while others believed it could be discontinuous.
What we had done was agreed on a common tool belt. Unlike writing and speech, a graph allowed us to see what others were thinking in its purest form, rather than having the ideas be obscured behind subjective words and phrases.
This is where mathematics could serve writing classes greatly. Where one might see functions and plots as stifling creativity, I see the development of tools that can be used to express our creative ideas even better. We can use an expanse of paragraphs to compare Hemingway’s staccato, declarative writing to that of other authors’, or we could graph the sentence length in a histogram plot using Mathematica.
These tools are not just meant for the STEM lab, but should also be incorporated into the construction and expression of writing. The liberal arts deserve as much.
Ultimately, I accept that it is far easier to incorporate writing into math courses than math into writing courses. While you can ask a student to describe their process in solving a math problem, you cannot ask them to write a series of equations to replace their paper.
That said, I think a mathematical approach could be incorporated into writing classes. A teacher could request that, before a student writes a paper, they list out the axioms of their ideas and symbolize logically how said axioms interact toward a conclusion. Above all, a focus on clarity, like you see in math, rather than on romanticism would be significant in and of itself.
Engineers often struggle with expressing themselves in good writing, but I believe writers could learn a thing or two from engineers too.
About the blogger:
Matthew Knipfer
Matt is a student at High Point University, triple-majoring in mathematical economics, mathematics and philosophy and minoring in statistics. He works as a writing associate with the campus honors program, helping coach underclassmen in improving their writing. This summer, he’ll be interning with Garda Capital Partners. His previous research explored ways to fundamentally redesign the federal tax system with calculus, and his current research on a new voting method combining ranked-choice with the Borda count will be showcased at an upcoming Mathematical Association of America meeting. His interests include machine learning, constitutional law and investment. He can be reached via e-mail or through LinkedIn.
