Prof Under Siege

One of my favourite professors (he teaches logic and number theory) has come under siege from some rather foolish people writing to Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Herald. It started when someone provided a definition of 'even'.

"I don't know what mathematicians Etan Stokes has been talking to!" thunders Martin Bunder, Professor of Mathematics as the University of Wollongong. "The even numbers are 0, 2, -2, 4, -4, 6, -6, … so 0 is even, and there is no smallest even number. 0, 1, -1, 2, -2, … are the integers. An even number is defined to be one that is twice an integer."

The response he received was, at best, confused. As a mathematics student it feels odd to see people get it so wrong:

"I don't know how Martin Bunder became a professor of mathematics with the kind of logic displayed in his argument but, by his own reasoning, he is incorrect," shrugs Robert Gotts, of Winmalee. "If an even number is an integer multiplied by 2 then what did he multiply to get 0? And how can we see by looking at 0 whether it has been multiplied by anything at all? Or if we divide it by 2 enough times would the resulting 0 then be an odd number? Zero is a place marker (note how it functions in binary). It counts nothing and represents the absence of anything countable."

I like the response though:

Professor Bunder is in the highest of dudgeon. "If you will allow me a response to Robert Gotts, you can have a long or a short version. The long is: Robert Gotts questions both my qualifications and my logic. I have a BSc in pure and applied maths, an MA in formal logic and a PhD in mathematical logic as well as over a hundred academic publications, mainly on mathematical logic, but also on number theory. I would guess that the number of Robert's formal qualifications in these areas is 0. The evenness of 0 relies only on the two simple definitions I gave last week. 0 is an integer, 0 = 2 x 0, so 0 is an even number. The short version is the last sentence."

See Column 8 for more. It's kind of like a discussion (refereed by the editor) on all sorts of weird things.