Three persons, travelling in a hot-air balloon, entered the Grand Canyon. One of them asked loudly, “Where are we?” His question reverberated across the gorge. Then they heard a reply, “You are lost … you are lost …”. One of them remarked, “That must be a mathematician.” “How do you know?” asked one of the other two. The one who had made the claim explained, “The reply came quickly, it was short, it served us nothing and it was a male voice”.

This ‘joke’ highlights a few misconceptions about mathematics. The first idea is that mathematical results are produced quickly. However, many mathematical theorems took a long time to be proved. Most notably, Fermat’s Last Theorem was first proposed by Pierre de Fermat in 1637 and proved by Andrew Wiles in 1994. The second idea, which suggests that mathematics is invariably ‘concise’, ignores the fact that many mathematical proofs spread across hundreds of pages.

Many mathematical theorems took a long time to be proved

The third idea suggests that, beyond basic stuff, mathematics lacks real-life applications. The fallacy of this notion emerges clearly in the book Innumeracy, written by John Allen Paulos.

The fourth idea presents mathematics as an exclusive male domain. This overlooks the increasing number of females who nowadays specialise in mathematics and mathematics-related studies.