Abstract
Many people think mathematics is just a boring collection of numbers and symbols but for me, it always feels like a detective story. My interest in mathematical science did not start from textbooks
or schools but from reading mystery fiction. In this post, I’d like to share how Sherlock Holmes
has led me to pursue a degree in mathematical science.
I grew up in a family with a strong science background. Both of my parents studied engineering, so ‘sciencey’ topics were quite common in our daily conversation. Surprisingly, I was not very good at math when I was a child. Instead, I enjoyed reading and writing. Everything changed one day when
I came across the famous Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in my local library. I became so obsessed with these stories that I spent almost all my spare time on reading the books, from Agatha Christie to Yokomizo Seishi. The price I paid was that my glasses lenses grew thicker each year.
The connection between mystery novels and math was first pointed out by my mom as she saw it as a good opportunity to ‘get me back on track’. Solving a math problem is exactly like a detective catching the bad guys. In mathematics, we are asked to prove a statement or do calculations based on what we are given while in detective fiction, we want to identify the culprit among several
suspects based on the clues we have. In both cases, we must identify useful clues, connect the dots, follow the trails, and finally uncover the truth. When I started to see math as an investigation, I began to truly enjoy it. The moment when a solution becomes clear feels like the final chapter of a
novel when the truth is revealed.
Today, as I sit in the uni lecture theatre learning much more advanced math or type on my laptop building neural networks to solve a real problem, I still feel like the same kid who used to hide under the blanket in bed at midnight reading detective novels with a flashlight. The thrill remains the same. It was the curiosity and desire for truth that eventually led me to pursue a higher degree in mathematical science.
Haowei Zhao
The University of Sydney
