Knowledge: some general knowledge questions

How do you measure knowledge? Do you do it by sticking people together in a dingy pub and asking them about everything from butterflies to butteries, from bowlers hats to Camilla Parker-Bowles, from World Cup finals to Miss World cup sizes? Perhaps. I think the starting-point for these somewhat abstract musings on the abstruse was last night's BBC2 programme, Wonderland: I Won University Challenge. No, that's not quite it: it's hearing (or overhearing, to be brutally honest) two builders this morning, discussing last night's BBC2 programme, Wonderland: I Won University Challenge.



Another question: What was the programme about? For those who didn't see the programme, what follows is in no way a review of the programme, which was for the most part an unremarkable documentary made remarkable only by the eccentricities and other outsiderish qualities evinced by those who took part, all of whom had been part of a winning team on University Challenge over the last forty-seven years. In my opinion, it was not an altogether successful programme in terms of its execution, simply because it chose to focus exclusively on those ex-contestants of the most outre variety, although 'variety' is perhaps a hugely inappropriate word here. True, some of those who took part in the programme were extremely interesting and shed some fleeting insights into what it's like to be of above-average intelligence (in some cases bordering on, if not quite inhabiting, the realms of genius), but not enough time was spent analysing why they are the way they are, and why they chose to lose themselves in drink, or isolation, or their work, or a mixture of the three. However, a programme featuring the most boring and run-of-the-mill winners of years gone by would not have made for a very appealing show. Still, grumble over. Forgive me, those who disagree. As I said, I have not set out with the intention of providing a TV review here. (Shudders at thought.) No, I wanted to discuss one particular clip from the show, which I overheard those two builders discussing this morning.

Paxman asks the starter question about the smallest number which is the sum of two cubes. Immediately, I'm thinking, '1729.' 1729 is a somewhat special number, as any mathematician worth his or her salt will readily tell you: it frequently turns up in interesting ways in the Matt Groening-created show Futurama, where there is at least one mathematician on the writing team. One of our star subjects (a rather shy but fascinating chap who is now a Classics Fellow at Oxbridge) then buzzes in and tells Paxman the answer. Paxman can hardly believe it. He looks genuinely incredulous, as though he'd just been presented with simple but comprehensive proof that God did not exist. But, hang about, I'm not a genius, and I've never won University Challenge, and yet I knew the answer to that question (I even got it a second before the chap buzzed in on University Challenge, if I want to be super-annoyingly smug about it, which, let's face it, I do). Yet those who I was sitting with watching the programme were equally astonished that the star subject had managed to answer this question, and yet had dismissed my knowledge of it, for some reason, with a shrug. But why?

Well, why? I think this goes back to an old thorny issue which I recently discussed briefly on this very blog with another University Challenge contestant, who, like me, is working in the arts rather than the sciences. It's obvious to anyone who regularly watches University Challenge that in the vast majority of instances when Paxman enthusiastically greets the giving of a correct answer to a starter question, it's a science question rather than an arts-based one. When was the last time you heard him utter a 'Well done!' to a question on Shakespeare, or Housman, or Philip Larkin? (All writers, I might add, who have been the subject of questions on this current series so far which have not been answered correctly by any of the eight contestants.) I find this imbalance intriguing. And hearing one of these builders this morning telling his friend about this particular question brought this sharply into focus for me. This is what the builder said:

'Paxman asked this question, something like what is this number multiplied by this number if you take away this number,' and this guy buzzed in before Paxman had even finished the question and said, '1758.' Paxman was like, 'What? Well done!'

Two things about this little speech. First, I'd like to draw your attention to the selective memory of the builder (imagine me pompously waving a lecturer's pointer at an imaginary projector screen): he remembered the question as distinctly being a calculation rather than the simple recall of a fact. Second, I will point out (as you, dear reader, in your percipience will have already noticed) that the builder in fact got the answer wrong. Contrast this case with, say, the following question: 'Which poet wrote the words, "Why sholuld I let the toad work squat on my life?"' (answer: Philip Larkin). If that question had been asked on University Challenge (indeed, it has, and recently), and someone had got it right (nobody did), would builders and other people (I apologise for singling out one particular profession here; but please, do bear in mind I'm basing this on a genuine experience) be talking about it, in tones of barely suppressed awe, the next day? I doubt it. And yet there is no real fundamental difference between the ways in which the answer to the first question and the second would be reached.

But isn't science knowledge valuable? Of course sometimes the praise is well deserved. Sometimes it's important to see medical students have their knowledge of diseases put to the test. And it is, after all, far harder to dabble in biochemistry than it is in Balzac; or maybe it's just that fewer people would choose to do so, because more people read literature for pleasure or as a diversion than pick up a book on enzymes. Isaac Asimov may have been a renowned biochemist, but more people know him as the author of the Foundation novels than The Chemicals of Life. But I think in the case of the '1729' question, it was simply misunderstanding. Most people don't understand mathematics; therefore most people don't bother to try to understand how a contestant could have worked out the answer to the question in just a few seconds. But it doesn't take too much imagination to perceive that it's one of those things that some people just know. I'm not a mathematician and my knowledge of all things mathematical pretty much ended when I collected my Maths A Level eight years ago, but I still knew it. In other words, many people (Paxman himself included, I'd suspect) just assumed that the contestant had worked out what the smallest number was that was the sum of two cubes. Have you tried doing that? Want to go and fetch a pen and paper and try to work it out now? Go on, I'll give you five minutes. But, bear in mind that you can't use a calculator and the student on University Challenge got the answer in about five seconds.

Another starter for ten for you? Okay. Or, look at it another way: if Paxman asked, 'What is the only word in the English language which ends with the letters mt?' and someone had buzzed in within the space of a few seconds and said, 'Dreamt', would Paxman, or the viewers at home, have suddenly intaken their breath and looked at each other, bemused and possibly bewitched? Would anyone assume that the contestant in question had the entire vocabulary of the English language memorised in his head, and had gone through this mental dictionary in a few seconds and located the correct answer? No, of course not. We'd just assume it was one of those things he (or she, sorry ladies for using the exclusive 'his' just now) happened to know. Pub trivia. The same is true of a lot of science knowledge. And, before we forget, let us remind ourselves that it was a Classics student who answered that Maths question.

I suppose the point of this little rambling essay is that, while I don't have much patience for the sort of people who see University Challenge as a yardstick by which the intellect of the entire student population can be measured, I do think this discrepancy between arts and science students, and the way these are respectively perceived by people around the country, is something that demands further attention. I certainly don't happen to think that the answers, right or wrong, that contestants give (in what is essentially a televised pub quiz) can have any bearing on that student's individual knowledge or intellect, much less be a reflection on the collective intellect of his or her institution. But I do think that the arts-science divide is, in a word, fascinating. Anyone else agree? Or have I just been talking nonsense again (which is always possible)?