A research article published this week in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences caught my attention. Two German scientists report that monkeys have the brain structure to learn and apply basic mathematical rules. Chartered accountants and theoretical physicists thought they were unique, but now this article shows that non-human monkeys can do math too.
I was thinking back to my own painful experiences learning math from sadistic teachers in India. Even now sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
Sharmaji, sir, if you are reading this, please know that calling us “dung-heads” in third period while bragging about your brilliant son who was a topper at IIT Powai didn’t transform us into Srinivasa Ramanujan. Instead, it scarred us for life. Some of us still have a hard time calculating the tip at restaurants.
The syllabus of Indian Certificate of Secondary Education and West Bengal Board of Secondary Education didn’t help either. There were always these math problems that made no sense at all. For instance, there was this math problem asking how fast water runs out of a bucket with a hole at the bottom and the tap running at the top. We were always advised to solve the problem in our “copy” without thinking about what kind of duffer would wantonly waste water that way.
But the worst ones by far, were the monkey problems. There was always some variant of an arithmetic problem where a monkey tried to climb an oily bamboo at a set speed while slipping. For example, as the monkey climbed two meters, it fell by one. The problem would always end by asking how long it would take for the monkey to climb to the top of a bamboo tree of a predetermined height.
Clearly, the first person who came up with this problem didn’t know anything about anything other than impossible math problems. Why would a monkey climb a bamboo in the first place? What was at the top of the bamboo? Bananas do not grow on bamboo trees, they grow on banana trees. What sort of person would oil a bamboo anyways? How would a bamboo be oiled? What kind of oil would be used? What was the purpose of this stupid exercise?
The more I think about it now, the more my blood boils. Some sadistic teacher decided to take out his frustration on generations of impressionable boys and girls because he (and it has to be a he) failed to do anything successful in life and his wife was boring and ugly.
I can’t also help but be amazed at just how brilliant non-human primates are! They can actually do math and yet they choose not to! No longer can they hide this fact though. Now, as humans we can inflict the same sort of pain on them too. Let them do ridiculous problems in which humans try to climb oily bamboos. To make it interesting let us get oily desis with no other purpose in life to actually climb bamboo trees while the monkeys do the math.
Now, I feel that my life has changed. From now on, whenever I need to know the difference between GCF and LCM, I can consult a wise orangutan named Yoda. At least Yoda doesn’t have a brilliant child who is a topper at IIT Powai.
Now monkey… how does it feel now?
© 2009-2011, Anirban