Professor helps spread
TV show math to the masses

Some of the genius-level math featured on the television program “Numb3rs” is being translated into exercises for kids by a UM math professor.

Johnny Lott, a faculty member at UM for the past 31 years, leads a team that designs activities derived from the prime-time CBS program, which airs at 9 p.m. Friday evenings. The lessons for teachers, students and parents are then placed on the “We All Use Math Every Day” Web site at http://www.cbs.com/primetime/numb3rs/ti/activities.shtml.

“It’s kind of a hoot doing this,” said Lott, who receives a synopsis of the math used in each program before it airs. Then, under a tight deadline, he and his team boil the complex problems into exercises that can be understood by average seventh- through 12th-graders.

Holding up the problems he helped develop from an episode titled “Assassins,” Lott said, “If anyone had ever told me I would be doing this, I’d say they had lost their mind. But it’s fun!”
The Web site is a collaboration among CBS, Texas Instruments and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics — the world’s largest mathematics education organization. Lott happens to be past president of NCTM, and he said the idea to collaborate with “Numb3rs” arose when his organization held a meeting last spring in Anaheim, Calif., which was attended by the stars and producers of the program.

“Numb3rs,” for those who haven’t seen it, is about an FBI agent who recruits his mathematical genius brother to help the government solve a wide range of challenging crimes. All the math used in the program is based on real FBI cases.

Lott said there are three people on his team to design the mathematical problems derived from the program: himself; Terry Souhrada, a retired UM faculty member who still works on projects for the UM math department; and Beth Glassman, a high school teacher from Texas. They are assisted by Karen Longhart, a teacher at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, who acts as a liaison among NCTM, TI and CBS.

“I don’t think any of us knew what we were getting into,” Lott said. “This medium is stressful. It winds up taking up a lot of nights. But we are obligated for the next year, and it’s exciting. We do get a small stipend, but we figure it comes out to something like $10 per hour.”

But he says the work is its own reward. For the “Assassin” episode, his group created an exercise in which students break secret codes.

Lott said he got hooked on “Numb3rs” last season.

“I thought, ‘This is fun. NCTM ought to do something with it,’” he said, “and here we are.”