Some uses for mathematics

Mathematics is a tool we use every day. But I often hear my 12-year old son say, "What's the use of learning this stuff?" He can be talking about any of the subjects he is learning but often he is talking about math. So, I'm going to try to write two short articles about uses for mathematics that you may not have thought about.

The first has to do with the recent elections in the country of Iran. That country had elections for the post of President. The current President is a very vocal anti-Western leader who is pushing for Iran to develop nuclear capabilities. He says it is for developing the ability to make nuclear power plants but other countries are worried about Iran's developing nuclear weapons. So, while we wouldn't normally be interested in an election in a foreign country, this one has consequences for our country and the rest of the world.

After the election, in which the current President won with a large majority, there were cries of fraud from the the opposition parties. You could just chalk this up to losers saying they were cheated but this interesting story in The Washington Post, titled, "The Devil is in the Digits", shows how, using mathematical principles and little bit of psychology, you can make a pretty good case that the election was not fair.

Using statistics, you can figure out that the numbers of votes and the distribution of the votes was probably manufactured. Usually, the last two digits of the large number of votes is a random number but in this case, they weren't. It can be proven mathematically that those numbers are pretty far away from being random. Well, if they aren't random, where did they come from? Either there was some bias to the numbers or someone made them up. That's where psychology is involved.

Psychology is the study of the human mind and why we do and don't do certain things. In this case it helps us understand that it is hard for people to make up numbers that are truly random. And by studying the numbers from the Iranian election, you can see that there is a real basis for the requests of the opposition parties for an investigation into the election.

Unfortunately, the Iranian government is really run by a small number of Muslim clerics and they have no intention of overturning the election or even of truly investigating it. They have done a rather lax investigation but it won't turn up anything because they don't want it to turn up anything. That is why it is important to rely on the unbiased numbers you get from a scientific investigation. Whether the election was truly fraudulent or not, there is a real reason for investigating. But if you ignore the math, it's just a matter of opinion. And those in power have the final opinion!

Next time I'll write about the mathematics involved in a game show that even confused mathematicians!