Jessica K. Sklar, an associate professor of mathematics at Pacific Lutheran University, has published in the field of noncommutative ring theory and in the more readily accessible field of recreational mathematics. Elizabeth S. Sklar, a professor emerita at Wayne State University, specializes in Old and Middle English language and literature. She has published extensively in the fields of modern and medieval Arthurian legend.

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