Dance Dance Revolution

It's hard to describe exactly what I did over the summer. Officially I say I participated in a summer math program, but it was much more than just that. It was a community of a hundred and fifty mathematicians, all uber smart and super crazy fun. And super crazy. And from that experience I have more than one weird story to tell...

The first one took place at a dance, and reminds me of what people think traditional crazy absent minded mathematicians are like.

One weekend we held a giant dance party. Different from our normal laundry room strobe light parties, this was to include many people in a larger space, and normal hip hop music. And most of all, dancing. In strobe light parties, you don't dance--you play around with the trippy effects of discontinuity...or, for the non-mathematicians, you play around with the trippy effects of stop motion, things like seeing through your hand or numbers on washing machines looking like they're floating in space.

Dancing, like dancing at a club type dancing, is a specific kind of dancing. I have personally always felt awkward about it, but as far as I could tell, you sort of bop to the music. So I went out on the dance floor and did my best, dancing with friends. As I'm dancing, I notice one of the grad students, Fiyero, sitting on the sidelines watching. I invited him over, worried that he felt excluded. He didn't seem to be having a very good time.

He shook his head and so I continued dancing. About five minutes later, I hear a cry from the sidelines-- "I've got it!" Fiyero exclaims. "What?" we all ask, inquisitively. "I understand how to dance. You see, I figured there had to be some kind of restriction that makes this dance what it is, and I've got it. You keep your elbows close to you."

I sort of stare at him, perplexed, then go into fits of laughter. He was such a typical mathematician. And yet, upon further thinking, we all agreed that he was probably right. It would seem super awkward to see someone with their elbows out.

Well, this was a long time ago, so you might be wondering why I mention this today. Today, I was wandering around the internet and bumped across this scientific study:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/08/psychologists-killer-dance-moves-men

If you watch the video closely, you'll see that their example of a good dancer keeps his elbows much closer to his body than their example of a bad dancer.

I'm telling you, mathematicians know how to dance.


Sachi