FIC: Math Anxiety, by Helen W. (wneleh) (Rising, Part 2)

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Title: Math Anxiety
Author: Helen W. (wneleh)
Episode: Rising, Part 2
Category: Gen
Major Characters: Rodney, Radek, John
Rated: PG for a couple of naughty words
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc. etc.
Summary: Rodney deals with John's knowledge of basic combinatorics.

Note: Much of the initial dialog comes directly from the episode Rising, Part 2, written by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, as transcribed by Callie Sullivan for Gateworld.

Thanks, cathexys, for the quick beta!

Math Anxiety
by Helen W.

During Rising, Part 2…

Everything was going to hell; everything was going to hell, and they were all going to die, and there wasn't a thing Rodney could do about it.

It was time to lay everything out. "The last Zero Point Module is depleted, but limited power," he said. "Turned out that our generators aren't going to hold back an ocean. Life support systems are working but the planet's atmosphere's breathable -- well, notwithstanding the inevitable allergens."

"So now can our naqahdah generators supply enough power to the shield for defensive purposes?" Elizabeth asked.

"Not even close."

Then Sheppard had to open his mouth. "On the surface without a shield? We're target practice."

"I'm acutely aware of that, Major, but thank you for reinforcing it," he snapped back. They were going to die, they were going to die…

"When can you tell me where the Wraith took Colonel Sumner and the others?" Sheppard pushed.

Could they do it? Could they try all the possible combinations? No, no way, no way, it was a waste of time they were going to die…

He had to make these people see this. "Even with the six symbols Lieutenant Ford provided there are still…" Six factorial - damn, too many, six times five times - shit, he couldn't think… "Hundreds of permutations."

Sheppard looked at him like he was an idiot - yeah, that was the look he was getting - and said, "Seven hundred and twenty."

Of course it was! "Yes. I knew that of course. I'm just surprised you did."

Sheppard ordered them to get busy, and he fled.

- - - - -

Later, when they didn't die and had had a chance to regroup a bit, Rodney computed up to twenty factorial, in his head, in - well, that couldn't have taken more than 15 seconds. How'd he choked on high school math earlier?

These things had to be automatic, that was it. During crises at the SGC, he'd always had the ability to open a friggin' Matlab window at least. Here, he couldn't be sure they'd even have power for the computers.

To survive here he'd have to memorize stupid math facts. More than just party tricks, more than just primes and digits of pi. A waste of brain space on Earth, but here, yeah, he had to know that stuff.

Like trig identities. He never could remember them, but what if he had to use one in an emergency? He needed a list of them, and he needed it now.

Calculus textbooks were good for things like that, but of course he hadn't brought one with him from Earth, because calculus was child's play and besides every lab he'd ever worked in had had at least one floating around.

Five minutes later, he was in the main lab, flipping through Faires and Faires, trying to look nonchalant, but still that Russian-Polish-whatever physicist, Rafi Zamboni (was that right? As names went, that one made no sense) was staring at him. "What are you doing, Doctor McKay?"

"Ah, just a little review," he said. "Never know when we'll need this stuff at the tips of our tongues out here."

"You're reviewing trigonometry? Surely the Canadian educational system…"

"I learned how to sling sines before I lost my first tooth! I could derive all this" - he waved at the page - "given five minutes, a Bic, and a yellow pad, but maybe the enemy isn't handing us those luxuries."

"Well, yes, agreed, it is not always possible to do proofs whenever one would wish," said couldn't-really-be-Zamboni, "But why would you ever need to know what sine of A plus B was, given sine A and sine B? And why not just use a calculator?"

"What if I didn't have one? What if it had been shot out of my hands?"

"Well, then use sine x equals x."

"Only for small values of x." For anything more than a couple of degrees he'd have to use more terms of the Taylor series, which of course he could derive but to survive here he'd better memorize it out to the x-to-the-fifth or sixth terms for sine, cosine, and tangent. And maybe not just the Taylor series about 0. And he'd have to be able to convert to radians, then convert back to degrees for whomever needed the number, which meant dividing and multiplying by fifty-seven point SOMETHING, but what? He'd just have to memorize 180/pi. And be able to multiply and divide multi-digit numbers in his head. Which, yes, he had mental tricks for, but under fire??

"Granted, but still, I repeat, under what circumstances would you possibly need to do this?"

"Well…" There had to be something. Yes! "Say I'm on another planet, or on a landmass here…"

"Why would you leave Atlantis?"

"Shhh. And I was pinned down at night, and needed to fire something at something on a hillside…" Damn, in a vacuum on Earth trajectories were cake, but the equations he knew didn't take air friction into account, and what if he didn't know local gravity? He'd go with something easy… "A laser. I had to fire a laser, in the dark, at a reflector. To let everyone know where we were. Not a problem if I know my location and the reflector is put where it was supposed to go, but what if someone tells me that they actually put the reflector at the top of the hill, twice as high as I'd already accounted for? To get the angle to fire at, I'd need to be able to take an inverse sine in my head."

"Inverse tangent, actually," couldn't-really-be-Zamboni replied. "The hypotenuse changes, the base stays the same."

"Yes, of course you're right," said Rodney. Would not-Zamboni buy it if he said he'd been testing him? Probably not. "But my point is," he continued, "to survive here, I - WE - need to be able to do these sorts of things, quickly and reliably, under any circumstance."

"Leave me out of this," said not-Zamboni. "I'd use the calculator in my watch. And call for help on my radio."

"Ion storm." Finally, something decent had sprung into his brain!

Not-Zamboni nodded, conceding the point, but continuing, "Even if you knew the precise angle upward to aim this theoretical laser, how would you know what direction to point it in? In relationship to local magnetic north?"

"Easy, I'd use a compass."

"I do not think a compass would work during your ion storm."

Rodney slammed the book shut. "Okay, Zam-zam Zamelli…"

"Zelenka, as I have told you several times."

"Zelenka. What would you do?"

"Let the military guard with me, who presumably know what they're doing, use their own methods to hit the target."

"Have you seen those guys?" Rodney sputtered. "Cavemen might do better."

"Then I would hand the laser to the caveman. He probably knows the hillside better than I would. And, anyway, I don't think you're being fair to our military companions. Major Sheppard especially seems quite bright."

Rodney shoved the book back onto the closest shelf. It was past time he ate something anyway.

- - - - - - - -

It turned out it was near noon, and the mess was reasonably busy. Still, it only took a few minutes for Rodney to grab a sandwich and a Coke, then turn and find Major Sheppard waving him over.

He sank into the chair across from Sheppard. "Um, sorry about Sumner…" he stopped, then waved his hand in a way that he hoped conveyed sympathy. This was not what he was good at!

Sheppard shook his head a fraction; he didn't seem to be good at this either. "You did good, finding the address of that space gate," he said.

"Yes, um, about that whole thing… why, precisely, did you have six factorial memorized?" he found himself asking.

"I didn't," said Sheppard, smiling - no, smirking. "Calculated it out while you were arguing. You give a guy a lot of time for mental math."

"Oh… well, you're welcome."

"McKay… okay, this is important. I've been doing this a long time. Almost twenty years. You understand what I'm saying? You get used to it. The more you do it - well, it doesn't feel better, but you stay sharper."

"I'm never not sharp!"

"Whatever you say, McKay."

"It's just…" Rodney rotated his plate a little. "There's a lot we need to know instantaneously, I'm finding. I'm planning on working on, you know, my already excellent mental processing speed."

Sheppard nodded. "Couldn't hurt."

"Like, what if I had to compute an inverse tangent in my head."

"Why would you have to compute an inverse tangent?"

"Say, I was trying to fire a laser at a target in the dark, to let you know my position, and I just knew height and horizontal distance."

"Laser?" Sheppard leaned forward. "Cool. What type? HeNe?"

"No, I was thinking just diode-based."

"You'd need something more powerful. And what kind of reflector? Something with some scatter? Or aimed?"

"Well, let's see," said Rodney. "Got some paper?"

From nowhere, Sheppard produced a yellow pad and a Bic.

* * * THE END * * *

All comments welcome, here or to helenw@murphnet.org.

More fanfic at http://www.murphnet.org/fanfic.

Comments

[cookiemom6067.livejournal.com]

This is so cute!!! It's so unusual to read a story from that early in their relationship. I like what you've envisioned here.

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

So often, I've seen John's "720" pointed to as evidence of mathematical genius. Um, no. But it does show something of how John thinks, and I think marks the start of the connection between John and Rodney.

[cookiemom6067.livejournal.com]

Yeah - even I can calculate 6 factorial in my head - and I'm NOT a math prodigy, either.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Yes! That! Thank you! The stories in which "performs mental arithmetic" + "took the Mensa test" = "has mastered advanced mathematics theory and casually references named primes" drive me up a tree!

... and yet I cherish various other fanon elements. Heh.

Anyway: I liked this a lot. I would totally be in Rodney's boat, all "I would just use a calculator, but what if I can't, crap! Back to the times tables!"

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Yes!

I actually do think John is very, very bright - perhaps even brighter than Rodney, because I think Rodney has some real deficits - but being able to figure out how many ways six symbols can be arranged != mathematic genius. OTOH, I'd totally be (and was, when I first watched the show) thinking "1x2x3 is six, times 4 is 12, times five is 60, times six is 360... wait, that's not right..." I had to do it about five times to get the right answer (starting with the big numbers and going down helped) whereas John just did the math quickly and correctly. I don't think Rodney was ever less precise than he had to be after that!

(Oh, I see we share an alma mater.)

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

(Indeed we do!)

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say John is brighter than Rodney, at least not in the traditional IQ sense. I'm pretty sure Rodney's two doctorates are canon, and they have him master a ludicrous breadth and variety of fields with little effort. John is good at people and arithmetic, he has to have at least a bachelor's degree to be an officer, and both being a pilot and military strategy do require intelligence, but I don't know of much other evidence along those lines. But the show doesn't like to give specifics anyway, so there's plenty of room for speculation. (And the ficcers cheer!)

I may have worked this out by now, but you seem a good person to ask: Why is it 6! from Ford's information? Gate addresses are seven positions, aren't they? Or is it that the last position is the home symbol for where you're dialing from, so in having six (and knowing none of the six is the current location marker somehow), you need only arrange them? That's the only way I get 6! as the total possible number of combinations. (This explanation only just occurred to me; I had always thought they were missing one position and had no idea how many possible characters were in the set.)

It's funny, I always do factorials from the highest number down, I think because otherwise I'd forget where I'm aiming to stop .... :>

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

I base my John's-at-least-Rodney's-peer theory on a few things:

(1) On the common measures of intelligence, such as the pre-mid-90s GRE/SAT tests (though the College Board would say that's a misuse), and the WISCs and such, they'd both ceiling out the subsections dealing with math, visual reasoning, and logic. I think John might do better on verbal sections. They both have amazing processing speed. John might also might be better at staying in the head space of IQ and standardized tests - jumping through the hoops, whereas Rodney might get hung up on the POV of the writer of a subsection of a verbal test. And if there's a writing component, I've no clue who would organize a better three-point paragraph.

(2) When it comes to pulling brilliant solutions out of mid-air, I think Rodney wins. But John often-as-not is right there with him, at least at a high level, and occasionally he's the one with the initial insight.

(3) Rodney is very, very, very good at his area of expertise; I completely grant him that!

- - - - -

RE: The dual-PhD thing - have I ever ranted at you about this before? That kinda drives me crazy, because getting two PhDs vs. one isn't really much more impressive than getting two high school diplomas from HSs with different areas of emphasis. Basically, if you want to change fields after you get a PhD, you just do it. Even concurrent PhDs just take more paperwork, more time, mean you have MORE learned persons breathing down your neck with their own ideas of what your dissertation should be like. I can buy Daniel Jackson collecting PhDs, because he probably started very young; may have gotten at least one of his from a place not generally recognized by U.S. academia; and may have not been ale to get even a post-doc, but was a decent TA prospect. But I would think Rodney would have gotten out of school as quickly as possible (and not necessarily by his own choice - if he was extremely obnoxious, and obviously good enough to get through, my department would have gotten him out fast).

As to why 6! - Stargate science makes my brain ache; your reasoning sounds good to me (helps that I saw Continuum the other day, where they talk about the home symbol, though I don't remember exactly what was said).

- - - - - -

I mostly do math in Matlab :-)

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

they have him master a ludicrous breadth and variety of fields with little effort.

I have a hard time evaluating the general competence and learning rate of scientists and engineers on TV, because they invent whole fields while I'm still trying to figure out how compile - i.e., it goes from realism to fantasy pretty quickly for me, and I tune it out and concentrate on intuition and strategy. (Carson Beckett, I think, does even more amazing stuff than Rodney.) So I may not give Rodney's brain as much respect as I should!

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

I love this! Because of course Rodney panics in math. :) I love that his instinct is that he's going to have to be the answer man in the field, while Zelenka's instinct is "yeah, I will never be in that position". It's a perfect illustration of their different styles.

And John pulling out the yellow pad and the bic at the end was ♥.

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commenting!

"Panics in math" - yes!

- Helen

[thatratorpheus.livejournal.com]

Poor Rodney, so competitive - and so sure that in any emergency he'll be the one called to know everything, while the rest stand around shuffling their feet and scratching their heads...which makes him kind of psychic, too, I guess. :-)

I have to laugh at Rodney's awe of Mensa (only brief in the show, but HUGE in fanon) - because it's not all that hard to get into Mensa, and, once you're in, there's nothing particularly special going on.

But, back to your story - love the voices. I love that John's skills come from experience and I love Radek's pragmatism - use the tools you have and leave the laser targeting to the guy who's been trained to do it.

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

I have to laugh at Rodney's awe of Mensa (only brief in the show, but HUGE in fanon) - because it's not all that hard to get into Mensa, and, once you're in, there's nothing particularly special going on.

I probably go two or three days at a time w/o talking to someone who wouldn't qualify, with the exception of one of my children. So, no, not so much the Mensa awe here. But I have friends who have lived in other areas of the country who have really enjoyed having a smart group of people to do things with, esp. people who aren't necessarily in the same fields. So like with many things in life I'm glad it exists but don't think it's for me.

As for John taking (and passing) the Mensa test - I take this as evidence that he likes smart people, which explains his getting of McKay. And Rodney's wonderment as being a sign that Rodney is, well, Rodney.

love the voices. I love that John's skills come from experience and I love Radek's pragmatism - use the tools you have and leave the laser targeting to the guy who's been trained to do it.

Thanks! That's what I was aiming for :-)

- Helen

[thatratorpheus.livejournal.com]

I figure John took the test just for fun. I'm projecting, of course - that's what my brother and I and some of our college friends decided to do after an evening of pizza and beer. And actually, the hardest part was navigating the underground hallways of MIT to find the exam room - we concluded that anybody who found the room passed the exam...which, I guess, would have been a problem for John, given his sense of direction. *g*

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Can't tell from this whether we also share an alma mater, since I was getting lost in the tunnels until the day I no longer had cause to be in them (actually, still do), but my sense was that most undergrads had them licked...

But I suspect that maybe we're not really proving our point here about the triviality of meeting's Mensa's membership requirements :-)

[thatratorpheus.livejournal.com]

Probably not - I don't really don't mean to trivialize it, but there was a time when one could get in with an SAT score of 1250. And I'm more thinking about it from a fan fic point of view. Recently, I read a story which had Rodney's IQ at 237 (like, how much IQ is enough?) and placed him in whatever percentile works out to 1 in 10 billion (perhaps the author was including other planets?). Those meetings must be kind of lonely. :-)

Alas, we don't share an alma mater - mine's that pile of rocks further down the avenue.

[trobadora]

This is utterly lovely, and spot on. Great Rodney panic! :)

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

adorable! Rodney panicking because he can't do the mental calculations in an emergency is too cute. and not-Zamboni! hee! I like the contrast between Rodney & Zelenka's style of thinking, and how you show how Sheppard both challenges Rodney (in the beginning) and connects with him (at the end). neat characterizations!

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I had a lot of fun with the voices in this one.