''New Math'' is a 1965 song by American musician

Tom Lehrer Thomas Andrew Lehrer (; born April 9, 1928) is an American former musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, having lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy and humorous songs that he recorded in ...

. Found on his album ''

That Was the Year That Was ''That Was the Year That Was'' (1965) is a live album recorded at the hungry i in San Francisco, containing performances by Tom Lehrer of satiric topical songs he originally wrote for the NBC television series ''That Was The Week That Was'', know ...

'', the song is a

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...

of the then-contemporary educational concept of

New Math New Mathematics or New Math was a dramatic but temporary change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries and elsewhere, during the 1950s1970s. Curriculum topics and teaching pract ...

Composition

The song is composed in the key of

C major C major (or the key of C) is a major scale based on C, consisting of the pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. C major is one of the most common keys used in music. Its key signature has no flats or sharps. Its relative minor is A minor and ...

in a 2/4

time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...

. It correctly describes the step-by-step process for subtracting 173 from 342 in

decimal The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...

and then subtracting the numbers 173₈ and 342₈ having the same digits in

octal The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is the radix, base-8 number system, and uses the Numerical digit, digits 0 to 7. This is to say that 10octal represents eight and 100octal represents sixty-four. However, English, like most languages, ...

. The song features a spoken-word intro by Lehrer, followed by "piano played at a quick tempo and brisk lines".

Context

Lehrer, at the time a doctoral student of

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, used the song to satirize the then-new educational concept of

, introduced in American schools in the late 1950s and early 1960s as an attempt to reform education of mathematics. According to the book ''The New Math: A Political History'', the song "purported to be a lesson for parents confused by recent changes in their children's arithmetic textbook". The same book states that by the time of the song's release in 1965, the concept was at its peak in American education. Lehrer's song has been described as "well-informed and literate ... enjoyed by new math proponents and critics alike". Historian Christopher J. Phillips writes that, by including this song among other songs of great political and social import on ''

'', Lehrer "seamlessly—and accurately—placed the new math among the major events of the mid-twentieth-century United States".

References

{{authority control Songs written by Tom Lehrer Mathematics-related topics in popular culture Mathematics education 1965 songs Mathematical humor