Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     
Foreword by Keith Devlin     
Introduction
JESSICA K. SKLAR and ELIZABETH S. SKLAR     

Part One: The Game
A Survey of Fictional Mathematics in Literature
ALEX KASMAN     
“You Never Said Anything about Math”: Math Phobia and Math Fanaticism in the World of Lost
KRISTINE LARSEN     
What’s in a Name? The Matrix as an Introduction to Mathematics
KRIS GREEN     
Mapping Contagion and Disease, Catastrophe and Destruction: Computer Modeling in the Epidemiological Disaster Narrative
KATHLEEN COYNE KELLY and DOUGLAS WHITTINGTON     
Fair and Unfair Division in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
WILLIAM GOLDBLOOM BLOCH and MICHAEL D. C. DROUT     
Game Theory in Popular Culture: Battles of Wits and Matters of Trust
JENNIFER FIRKINS NORDSTROM     
Coming Out of the Dungeon: Mathematics and Role-Playing Games
KRIS GREEN     
Playing Moneyball: Math and Baseball
JEFF HILDEBRAND     
A Mathematician Does the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle
GENE ABRAMS     

Part Two: The Players
XKCD: A Web of Popular Culture
KAREN BURNHAM     
Counting with the Sharks: Math-Savvy Gamblers in Popular Culture
MATTHEW LANE     
Stand and Deliver Twenty Years Later
KSENIJA SIMIC-MULLER, MAURA VARLEY GUTIÉRREZ and RODRIGO JORGE GUTIÉRREZ     
Smart Girls: The Uncanny Daughters of Arcadia and Proof
SHARON ALKER and ROBERTA DAVIDSON     
Mean Girls: A Metamorphosis of the Female Math Nerd
KRISTIN ROWAN     
The Mathematical Misanthrope and American Popular Culture
KENNETH FAULKNER     
Alan Turing: Reflecting on the Life, Work, and Popular Representations of a Queer Mathematician
K. G. VALENTE     
Mat(t)h Anxiety: Math as Symptom in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting
DONALD L. HOFFMAN     

Part Three: Math + Metaphor
Thinking Outside the Box: Application Versus Discovery in Saw and Cube
JESSICA K. SKLAR     
Tolstoy’s Integration Metaphor from War and Peace
STEPHEN T. AHEARN     
“We’ll all change together”: Mathematics as Metaphor in Greg Egan’s Fiction
NEIL EASTERBROOK     
Truth by the Numbers: Mysticism and Madness in Darren Aronofsky’s
LAURIE A. FINKE and MARTIN B. SHICHTMAN     
Flatland in Popular Culture
LILA MARZ HARPER     
Discovering a Higher Plane: Dimensionality and Enlightenment in Flatland and Diaspora
CHRIS PAK     
Projective Geometry in Early Twentieth-Century Esotericism: From the Anthroposophical Society to the Thoth Tarot
RICHARD KACZYNSKI     

Appendices
A: Mathematics in Performance Media     
B: Mathematics in Fiction and Poetry     
About the Contributors     
Index