The Housekeeper and the Professor

So I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a while.

I didn’t start it earlier because I was trying to think of a theme for my blog. I thought that if I was going to start writing entries that they should have something in common. Some people write about their travels while others zone in on a specific interest (for example, Leianne with food and belly dancing). However, I don’t have one (or two) things that I could make all my entries about so I’ve given up on choosing a theme. On Shannon’s advice I’m just going to write my blog on random things - basically whatever comes to mind.

I’m always pondering the randomness of things, questioning how the world works, etc. You’d be surprised how often something like a commercial or comment from someone spawns a couple hour search on the internet in the weirdest of trails. For example, have you ever heard of a False Killer Whale, or a Wholphin for that matter? Didn’t think so!

This blog will be the perfect place to share my reservoir of knowledge and random comments for whoever’s interested. Also, it will be a great place to practice my writing skills - an added bonus I suppose.

So for my first entry I’m going to talk about what may possibly be the coolest book ever! I actually haven’t read it in it’s entirety yet but I just know that I’m going to love it. The book I’m talking about is The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. It was written in Japanese in 2003 and was translated to English in 2009. The Professor is a mathematician who suffered brain damage and has lost short term ability. After 80 minutes his memory resets so he has a housekeeper to take care of him. The Professor is obsessed with mathematics and so has countless conversations with the housekeeper and her son about the beauty of numbers and just mathematical concepts in general. Though it is a novel, this book is rich with math, and more so it’s math that everyone can grasp.

I was first introduced to this novel by Ron Lancaster who was a guest speaker in my math instruction course at OISE (not to be confused with someone who apparently played in the CFL). He is so passionate about mathematics, he actually reminds me very much of the Professor (without the brain damage of course). He spoke of many things at OISE but this past Tuesday I went to a conference of his where he talked exclusively about this book and the potential to include it in teaching high school mathematics.

Here’s an excerpt from the novel. Here the Professor asks the housekeeper to take a break from working to discuss “amicable (or friendly) numbers”. Don’t worry, I had no idea what they were either but it’s actually rather cool (well, I think it is):< [ For the non-mathematically inclined, a factor of a number A is just a number that divides into A "nicely". For example, factors of 6 are 1,2, 3 and 6 since 6/1 = 6 , 6/2 = 3, 6/3 = 2 and 6/6 = 1.  4 and 5 are not factors of 6  since 6/4 = 1.5 and 6/5 = 1.2 (not so nice!) ]

So hopefully you digested everything and enjoyed reading the excerpt. The novel is just full of cute things like this. I swear this isn't just a math textbook in disguise. It's a novel that fuses math beautifully into it's story.

In Japan they actually make this novel into a movie, The Professor's Beloved Equation (which for you mathies out there his beloved equation is e^πi+1=0). I hyperlinked a YouTube video from what I believe is the last scene of the movie. Unfortunately there's no English subtitles here - however Ron Lancaster (who I just have to reiterate, is so cool) has a few copies of the DVD from Amazon on hand and that has English subtitles. Because I've shown such an interest in the book, he's ever so kindly is going to send me a copy of the DVD as a gift. So once I get that perhaps we can have a movie night? Anyone interested?

So yeah, I think I've made this first blog perhaps too long. This is my first time blogging so feedback would be awesome. What did you like? Not like? What would you like to see more of? Were the hyperlinks just stupid? OK maybe that one was. I promise math will rarely come up in future blog entries. I just seriously love this book and I just want to shout that from the rooftops. However, we live in a tech-savvy world where blogging is the new shouting from the rooftops. Hopefully you enjoyed reading and will continue reading. Become a "follower" if you liked it :).