Math from Car Talk

After stating this week’s Car Talk Puzzler, Tom and Ray said that the answer could be submitted via mail, email, or phone, and they gave the address, email address, and phone number. But their statement of the phone number was ambiguous. They said,

If you’d like to call us, the number is 1-888-CAR-TALK; that’s one-eight-eight-eight, two-two-seven, eight-five-squared-eight.

Near the end of the number, you’ll see that they included a “five-squared” to liven things up. No doubt, they did this to follow the lead of Ed Drewitz, a listener who suggested three alternative mnemonics for remembering the Car Talk phone number:

• log^-1 (10.27605439324)
• 2662.879194172³
• cos 79.11590889189° × 10,000,000,000

As part of a phone number, I was unsure how to interpret “five-squared.” Did it mean two 5’s? Or was it to be translated as 25, meaning a 2 and a 5? Converting TALK to the phone digits 8255, I was happy to see that 5² was meant to represent 25, which is what I had hoped but dubious that that’s what it was.

Later in the show, Ray and Tom discussed an interesting piece of research, which concluded that genius is passed from mothers to offspring, and that fathers have very little influence. This bummed me out. Three days ago, Alex told me, “A tablespoon is equal to 3 teaspoons, and that’s 12 quarter-teaspoons. We need 2 1/4 teaspoons, which is 9 quarters. So, we need to fill the tablespoon 9/12 full, which is 3/4.” That struck me as pretty good for a six-year-old — and I beamed with pride until I learned today that all of his mathematical acumen is likely derived from his mother. Ha-rumph.

There is, however, empirical evidence to the contrary. I recently read an article about wunderkind Jacob Barrett who has a 170 IQ and, at just 12 years old, was primed to become a paid research assistant in astrophysics. In an article in the Daily Mail, his mother Kristine Barnett admitted, “I flunked math. I know [Jacob’s ability] did not come from me.”

I don’t claim to have an IQ of 170, nor do I have a firm understanding of astrophysics. But my mother and Jacob’s mother seem to have a lot in common. My mother used to exclaim, “How the hell can x = 6, when x is a letter, and 6 is a number?”

God rest her soul. I hope she’s found peace in an algebra-free eternity.