Math Doesn’t Have His Number--to the Contrary, He Equates It With Fun
Mathematics professor Richard Zucker has always enjoyed taking on the challenge of a good puzzle.
A lot.
A dozen years ago, he spent most of his waking hours during a three-month period working on the solution to a conundrum called the Decipher Contest, a puzzle with numbered pieces sold in major department stores nationwide. Each number represented a letter.
Of the 200,000 people who purchased the puzzles, only 36 were able to figure out the secret message the puzzle spelled out. Zucker was among them.
“I had bought this as a potential Christmas present for my step-daughter and wound up opening it the moment I got home. I couldn’t stand it,” said Zucker, a 45-year-old Irvine resident recently voted one of two teachers of the year by students at Irvine Valley College.
“For three solid months, I worked on this thing, and I worked on it day and night. I worked on it during faculty meetings. The clues eventually led to the book ‘Cosmos,’ by Carl Sagan.”
Zucker discovered that each number corresponded to the first letter of a word in Sagan’s book. Using a computer to analyze the text with a formula he created, he solved the puzzle and won $3,251.71 for his efforts. The letters spelled out a passage from an e.e. cummings poem.
Two years later, Zucker won $1,000 for solving the “Swiss Colony Cryptogift,” a similar puzzle that required an equally strenuous effort. Last April, Zucker and Irvine Valley College Honor Society President Andrea Brown won the top prize at the national convention of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year colleges, by solving a series of puzzles.
Contrary to popular belief, Zucker says, math is fun.
“I always enjoyed the promise of discovery, that there was something hidden from view that I could discover. I also loved math just for the sheer beauty of it. When I majored in math, I could have chosen applied mathematics, but I chose the study of pure mathematical theory instead. I enjoy the subject for itself, not for what it can do.”
It has always been somewhat distressing for Zucker that the subject in which he takes such delight creates such distaste in so many. But he has found a way to break down his students’ resistance: magic.
One of his favorite tricks is to give a small group of single-digit playing cards to a student to shuffle. The student then enters the individual digits of the cards into a calculator, as a single number.
The student then multiplies the number times any number between one and 1,000. Zucker has the student read the answer aloud, digit by digit, leaving out one of the digits. He then identifies the missing digit.
“It’s fun, because I just don’t perform it. We investigate how it works and why it works. Because the cards I give out add up to a multiple of nine, the answer also has to add up to a multiple of nine. The missing number is the one needed to make the total a multiple of nine.”
Zucker also uses cards without tricks to overcome students’ reluctance to admit when they are having trouble in class.
“One of the greatest problems any teacher faces is to get their students to open up and voluntarily say, ‘I don’t understand something.’ If I were to ask a group of math students, ‘How many of you don’t understand what I just did?’ I’d be lucky to see one or two hands because people are afraid of looking dumb.
“So I give everybody a blue card and a red card that they keep through the whole semester. I’ll say, ‘Take out your cards. I want to see a blue card if everything’s fine and you’re feeling OK, or a red card if what I just explained doesn’t make sense to you, or you’re not feeling OK.’
“Blue is ‘I’m cool,’ and red is ‘I’m dead.’ The way they do it, nobody else can see their cards. It has worked incredibly well.”
Though Zucker teaches such advanced courses as linear algebra and differential equations, he says teaching the basics to returning adult students is the most challenging and satisfying part of his job.
“The students who take those courses have been turned off to math for most of their lives. Their anxiety levels are very high.
“The classic returning student is the housewife who has raised her children and is coming back to be trained to reenter the job market, or for personal fulfillment. They are the most terrified, and yet they are the most successful; the best performers.
“Women have been socialized into believing they can’t do mathematics. It’s a myth. I love to work with these people. When you can take somebody who’s afraid, terrified of mathematics, all the way through to the end of the semester where they’re saying, ‘Wow! I think I’ll take another math course.’ That’s a total accomplishment for me.”
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Profile: Richard Zucker
Age: 45
Hometown: Long Beach
Residence: Irvine
Family: Wife, Connie; two grown stepdaughters; two grandchildren
Education: Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Harvey Mudd College; master’s degree in mathematics from Brandeis University
Professional background: Systems analyst for Megatek Corp., 1978; math instructor, College of the Canyons (Valencia), 1975-79; math professor, Irvine Valley College since 1979
Honors: “Woman of the Year” from Ebell Club of Irvine (a women’s club) for designing puzzles used in fund-raising road rallies; Fulbright Teacher Exchange participant, 1992; teacher of the year, Irvine Valley College, 1993 and 1997
Activities: Co-author, “Learning BASIC Programming”; partner in computer software company, 1984-87; National Science Foundation mentor teacher, 1987; math puzzle editor, Irvine World News, 1986-88; ran computer-consulting business, 1987-89; member at large and newsletter editor, Community Colleges South division, California Math Council, 1991-94; president, Orange County Math Council, 1994-95; instructor, Summer Mathematics Institute (UCI), 1990-96; advisor, Irvine Valley College Honor Society since 1995; member, International Brotherhood of Magicians; creates math-based puzzles and magic shows
On being a math teacher: “When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a teacher, and they say, ‘Oh that’s really great. What do you teach?’ And then I say math. You usually see a dramatic change in their faces. Hardly anybody is very excited about the fact I teach math.”
Source: Richard Zucker; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times
