WS MoreOrLess: Brazil’s Maths Superstar
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What is the episode about and why focus on Brazil and mathematics?
This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. It's not the size of our data set that matters, it's what we do with it that counts. I'm Tim Harford. The World Cup is coming and all eyes are turning to Brazil, which means that over the next few months you'll be hearing a lot about football, beaches and samba. You probably won't hear a lot about maths. Now, of course, at More or Less, we're not just going to take that lying down, sipping a caipirinha while listening to the greatest hits of Gilberto Gil. So we turned to the only person we know who's an expert on both Brazil and mathematics, Alex Belos, and we challenged him to find a fantastical tale which combines the two, preferably something to do with the National Day of Mathematics that Brazil celebrated last Tuesday.
How did Malba Tahan and The Man Who Counted first appear in Brazil’s newspapers?
Easy.
Rio de Janeiro, 1925, and Brazil is on the up. Workers are building the city's landmark Christ the Redeemer statue, samba and new music is becoming a national craze, and the country's main newspaper, Anoich, introduces a new star writer with a story on the front page. Malba Tahan, or, to give him his full name, Ali Yezid Izzedim Ibn Salim Hank Malba Tahan, was a Middle Eastern author who wrote in Arabic and was translated into Portuguese for the Brazilian market. His short pieces were morality tales written in the style of the Arabian Nights. They were a huge success, and in 1932, Malbata Han published what would become one of the most successful books ever written in Brazil, O Home que Calculava, The Man Who Counted.
The book is set in the 13th century.
What is the story and mathematical premise of The Man Who Counted?
In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful. I was on the Baghdad road, returning at my camel's slow pace from an excursion to the famous city of Samarra on the banks of the Tigris, when I saw a modestly dressed traveller sitting on a rock who looked as if he was recuperating from a voyage.
The traveller is Beremiz Samir, a Persian mathematician who joins the narrator on a journey that involves dozens of episodes in which he solves problems using his skill with numbers. At one point, he visits the house of the king's minister, the vizier Ibrahim Malouf.
We passed through the heavy iron gate and down a narrow corridor into the splendid inner garden of the palace. This garden, laid out with exquisite taste, was shaded by two rows of orange trees.
How do specific puzzles (like the camels and the missing ear) illustrate the book’s maths?
Passing through a variety of richly furnished rooms hung with tapestry fringed in silver thread, we at last reached the rooms of the king's minister, who was reclining on large cushions and conversing with two friends.
Bérémis impresses the vizier with an unusual way of counting a herd of camels. He counts the number of hooves in ears and then divides by six. The camels are a gift for the father of the vizier's 16-year-old wife-to-be, but Bérémis notices that one is missing an ear.
I wanted to make a small suggestion, replied Bérémis. If you were to remove from the herd the defective animal, the total would be 256, which is the square of 16. 16 times 16. The gift offered to the father of the delightful Astir would then have a mathematical perfection, the number of camels equal to the square of the age of the beloved. The number 256 is an exact power of two, a number held to be symbolic by the ancients, while 257 is a prime number. These relations between squared numbers are good auguries for lovers. I love The Man Who Counted.
The book transports you into a magical world of Bedouins, viziers, sheikhs, princes and kings, rich in references to Islamic traditions and locations in the Middle East. The maths is gentle, accessible and drives the stories. It's mostly arithmetic but there are geometrical puzzles too and also curiosities like magic squares. the man who counted rightly became a bestseller and turned Malbata Han into a household name, a mathematician as famous as Brazil's football stars.
Who was the real author behind the pen name Malba Tahan and how was the hoax revealed?
His fans ranged from schoolchildren to the president of Brazil and include Brazil's most famous author, Paulo Coelho.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the episode about and why focus on Brazil and mathematics?
0:00–1:05
2
How did Malba Tahan and The Man Who Counted first appear in Brazil’s newspapers?
1:05–2:25
3
What is the story and mathematical premise of The Man Who Counted?
2:25–3:22
4
How do specific puzzles (like the camels and the missing ear) illustrate the book’s maths?
3:22–5:20
5
Who was the real author behind the pen name Malba Tahan and how was the hoax revealed?
5:20–6:01
6
Why did Brazilian readers embrace Malba Tahan and what cultural impact did he have?
6:01–7:25
7
How is Malba Tahan commemorated today and what is his lasting legacy in Brazil?
7:25–9:32