Why Thinking Like a Mathematician Can Help Society to Combat Racism and Prejudices?
Published by Most people think that mathematics are only useful for either engineering or hard science. That could be right or wrong. But actually the way of thinking mathematicians use could also benefit us socially for combating racism and prejudices.
There is this particular mathematics joke telling about an astronomer, a phychisist and a mathematicians going to their first trip to New Zealand. After they arrived in New Zealand, the three of them ride a train and see a black sheep. The astronomer quickly say, “Hey look, sheeps in New Zealand are black”. The physicist then try to correct the astronomer by saying, “No, not all sheeps in New Zealand are black, only some of them are black”. The mathematician, annoyed by her friends muddled thinking then correct them by saying “In New Zealand, there is at least one sheep, at least one side of which looks black.”
“The mathematicians remind us that we actually only know the side of the sheep that we see”
This joke, while initially intended to shone lights on mathematicians tendency to avoid making generalization even if that generalization is reasonable, actually have another lesson that we can learn from.
Several months ago when my aunt from Malaysia visits Indonesia her purse was robbed when she went to the market. Not only she lost her money, her passport which she carried with her in her purse was also lost. She need to report to the police station to get a lost item confirmation letter, so she can get a new passport in the Malaysian Embassy. To make the matter worse, there is no Malaysian Embassy in the city where I live in. Thus she have to go to Jakarta to make a new passport. What caught my attention though is how she said that Indonesia is full of robbers, while I am sure she is just unlucky and careless.
But that is how most of us think, we tend to over-generalize people we consider as outsiders and we tend to focus on the negative. When we experience something bad dealing with people outside our groups, we tend to think and say that everyone who belongs to those groups are all bad people, just like how the astronomer in the joke said that all sheeps in New Zealand are black.
The physicists words remind us about the possibility of inaccuracies if a conclusion is taken when the amount of observation done is insufficient. A race or a nation consists of more than one people with different personalities and looking into the closest people to us – our families and friends – is more than enough to confirm that. There are good people and bad people in every race, religious affiliation or nation.
The mathematicians words further remind us about another truth when she stated about the side of sheep. Even when we only observe one person, our observation could be biased and incomplete, just like the fact that all three of them actually only see one side of the sheep. Even people who we consider the most annoying could actually have one or two good side. But then it is our choice to decide whether it is worth it for us to further deal with them or not.
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