Mathematics in Popular Culture

Gregory Benoit

Popular culture has had a great deal of impact on our social, cultural, and political worlds; it is portrayed through different mediums, in different forms, and connects the world to ideas, beliefs, and different perspectives. Though this dissertation is part of a larger body of work that examines the complex relationship between popular culture and mathematical identity, this study takes a different perspective by examining it through the lens of mathematical Internet memes. This study was conducted with 31 secondary school participants and used a two-tiered approach (in-depth focus groups and an individual meme activity) at each of the five school sites visited around New York City. Multiple sources of data were used to reveal that students are receiving messages about mathematics from memes in popular culture. In particular, participants described six core themes from the meme...