kitchen table math, the sequel: Art Garfunkel, thinking in proportions

Monday, May 25, 2015

Art Garfunkel, thinking in proportions

In the Telegraph:
[Art Garfunkel] also does a lot of mathematics, having read it as a student at Columbia. “I’m precise. I think in proportions. I play games with numbers and I proportionalise. I imagine we have now done 1/8th of our interview.” I check my watch.

He even took a job as a maths teacher at one point, in the Seventies, despite being a world famous pop star.

“I’d just got married and moved to Connecticut, and there was a nearby preparatory school and so I taught math there. It was a weird stage of my life, to leave Simon & Garfunkel at the height of our success and become a math teacher. I would talk them through a math problem and ask if anyone had any questions and they would say: “What were the Beatles like?”

[snip]

When he drifts off back to the lifts, singing to himself again, I check my watch. Turns out his mental clock, when he guessed how far we were through the interview, was exactly right.

Art Garfunkel on Paul Simon: 'I created a monster'
By Nigel Farndale | 10:25PM BST 24 May 2015

2 comments:

Jean said...

I did not know that I could love Art Garfunkel more. :)

Anonymous said...

On a related note: Tom Lehrer (who wrote the song "New Math" and other famous comedic commentaries) taught math at the university level.