This is rather far off-topic, but since it has national security implications, and since it’s outrageous, I’m sure readers will want to heed the lessons in this story before you board your next airplane.
The Washington Post and others appear to be reporting that “See Something, Say Something” applies to differential equations. The net result was that the innumerate woman was allowed off the plane to take a safer flight, the plane was delayed several hours, and an award-winning Ivy League economist got some expansion room next to him.
Excerpts from Catherine Rampell’s Rampage column on economics, policy, and culture at the Washington Post:
That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.
Had the crew or security members perhaps quickly googled this good-natured, bespectacled passenger before waylaying everyone for several hours, they might have learned that he — Guido Menzio — is a young but decorated Ivy League economist. And that he’s best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
They might even have discovered that last year he was awarded the prestigious Carlo Alberto Medal, given to the best Italian economist under 40. That’s right: He’s Italian, not Middle Eastern, or whatever heritage usually gets ethnically profiled on flights these days.
What was he working on? Differential equations, in preparation for a talk at an economic conference in Canada. He was probably using Arabic numerals too.
I assume he made it into Canada. No word on what awaits him when returning to the USA.
The next time I have a math puzzle to work on during a flight, I’m going to do it in Roman numerals.
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“That’s right: He’s Italian, not Middle Eastern, or whatever heritage usually gets ethnically profiled on flights these days.”
What!?! Middle Eastern gets profiled? Come again? The only ethnicity that is guaranteed not to be profiled is young, male, Middle Easterner. 85 year old Japanese man – search him! 90 year old Irish grandmother – search her. 10 year old girl – check her luggage. 28 year old male Saudi – can we expedite you through security sir?
Colleagues of mine and I were heading to a plasma physics conference and we were doing ‘shop’ talk while boarding the plane and were slowly moving through the isle. My colleague had just made a comment on ‘Coulomb explosions’ a topic in plasma physics and I saw some passengers taking notice, looking at us with raised eyebrows. I whispered to my colleague to watch what he was saying. He immediately recognized that this could spell trouble and switched the subject. The flight was NOT interrupted and we arrived at our destination without any incidence. Whew! Yes and writing differential equations during the flight certainly is Verboten! Just simple addition and subtraction is ok, but no formulas, whatsoever. LOL!
You must be on a long flight. You cannot arrive without the incidence of your flight path colliding with the runway
Oops, incident!
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
I love it because that’s usually the kind of stupidity that flows from leftist intellectuals. Are we sure that the woman in the story wasn’t a professor of women’s studies at some Ivy League school?
From th3e linked article;
“Menzio for his part says he was “treated respectfully throughout,” though he remains baffled and frustrated by a “broken system that does not collect information efficiently.” He is troubled by the ignorance of his fellow passenger, as well as “A security protocol that is too rigid–in the sense that once the whistle is blown everything stops without checks–and relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless. ”
Rising xenophobia stoked by the presidential campaign, he suggested, may soon make things worse for people who happen to look a little other-ish.
“What might prevent an epidemic of paranoia? It is hard not to recognize in this incident, the ethos of [Donald] Trump’s voting base,” he wrote.”
Hmm . . an expert on US information collection . . and security protocol, and clueless people it relies upon for input . . and the ethos of Mr. Trump’s voting base . .which he apparently detected was influencing this passenger . . with his magical mathematical superpowers . .
Stinks to high heaven, in my nose ; )
Assault with a deadly theorem…..A Federal criminal statute….
Only if you have a proof.
SMC
Doesn’t (XVI)(XVI)=CCLVI
Yep. Dang roman numerals. 🙂
algebra in college???
when did algebra become a college course?, wasn’t it taught in high school? how does one get into a 4-year college without algebra as a pre-requisite?
or did they mean abstract algebra or linear algebra, which are legit college courses.
Several of the posts above highlight the main difficulty with Roman numerals – fractions. This is why I believe that while they were competent *builders*, the Romans were technologically incapable of real engineering. When they needed engineers, they hired Greeks (Pythagoreans, no doubt).
Even the Egyptians had a better idea of the value of pi.
There’s pie?
What is even more silly is what Professor Menzio wrote at the end of his tweet, “Trumps America is already here.”
Do the math genius … we are living in Obama’s America until he turns in his keys.
…IF he turns in his keys …
Read James Franklin’s *The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal* (JHU 2015). Pascal gave us frequentist statistics and inductive inference from which we have yet to recover. Beware The Black Swan of reality!
I did not finish high school but even I can figure out the difference between differential equations and Arabic (or other) foreign scripts. The result of the modern educational system? Maybe I should be glad that I was unable to complete my education and so, filled in the holes by reading and learning, independently of the socialist curriculum?
I too have doubts WRT the modern education system. I found stamp collecting exposed one to many languages and scripts.
From a Guido Menzio FB post:
http://wermenh.com/images/menzio.jpg
“Trump’s America is already here”??? Was this whole thing an attempt to smear Trump? And does an economist actually use differential equations? It smells like a set-up.
So awfully ignorant to assume Trump’s America is racist, I’d laugh right out loud if it was a Clinton or Saunders supporter who was ‘afraid’ of he and his math and not a Trump supporter. Now I don’t feel sorry for him at all.
A correction to the libro-political Trump jibe in this post.
This is clearly ‘Obama’s America’, because he is in charge (sort of). Nothing to do with Trump. It is Obama who appeased the Muslim Brotherhood and allowed them to (temporarily) gain power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. And it was Obama who set Iran on the road to nuclear weaponry. And it was this absurd decision that prompted an unlikely meeting between Israel and Saudi Arabia on how to counter the threat of a nuclear Iran.
It is Obama’s laissez faire or pro-MB foreign policy that is making the world more unstable.
R
Anyone who reads these pages knows that I am no fan of Trumps, but he is no racist. He’s not a sexist either, though he’s often accused of that.
It really is sad the way liberals assume that anyone who disagrees with them must be some kind of evil.
Sound airline security is not inconsistent with common sense. In fact, it’s not possible without it.
I myself have done math on a plane. I had no idea I was endangering the lives of my fellow passengers.
Only the ones with weapons grade stupidity.
this was funny at first read – then… – who’s protocol led to the several hours delay – the airline’s or the fed’s – that’s where the most stupidity lies – the protocols should error on the side of caution – not paranoia
as for a passenger who didn’t recognize math – that’s a sad & unavoidable problem – but no doubt several other people viewed the paper – and still the plane was waylaid – why?
I would only advise doing this if you really like spending time with those nice DHS agents.
Good comment on a BBC FB page: