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Airline Delays Flight Over Passenger's Suspicious Math Equations (usnews.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the irrational-numbers dept.

Earthquake Retrofit shares this article from the Associated Press: "An Ivy League professor said his flight was delayed because a fellow passenger thought the math equations he was writing might be a sign he was a terrorist... He said the woman sitting next to him passed a note to a flight attendant and the plane headed back to the gate. Guido Menzio, who is Italian and has curly, dark hair, said the pilot then asked for a word and he was questioned by an official... "They tell me that the woman was concerned that I was a terrorist because I was writing strange things on a pad of paper..." He was treated respectfully throughout, he added. But, he said, he was concerned about a delay that a brief conversation or an Internet search could have resolved. "Not seeking additional information after reports of 'suspicious activity'... is going to create a lot of problems, especially as xenophobic attitudes may be emerging."

45 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Paranoia strikes deep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Into your life it will creep
    It starts when you're always afraid
    Step out of line, the men come and take you away

    1. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by rochrist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Eh. I expect she didn't KNOW it was math and assumed it was Arabbic, because, you know, squiggly lines and the state of American education.

    2. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

      Eh. I expect she didn't KNOW it was math and assumed it was Arabic

      Well, if he was doing math, he was probably using a bunch of Greek symbols.

      So imagine sending this woman to Greece. She would wig out and scream, "All the street signs and stores are labeled with terrorist speak!"

      It's actually quite sad, that she could not recognize that he was doing mathematics. Nobody is asking her to classify the equation, or find the homogeneous solution, but to recognize mathematical problem solving . . . ? What did she do, skip elementary school . . . ?

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by Deadstick · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wait until Homeland Security finds out he was writing it in Arabic numerals.

    4. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by narcc · · Score: 5, Funny

      Arabic numerals, combined with the new evidence he was carrying methods of math instruction, all lead to one conclusion...

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    5. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by vel-ex-tech · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What did she do, skip elementary school . . . ?

      I've been finding myself wondering about this lately when it comes to a number of people I know.

      Seriously, we need some way to send these people back to 5th grade. It's astonishing. Maybe 3rd grade. Force them to take classes until they at least graduate the 8th grade. Keep them out of society as long as it takes for them to grasp 8th grade-level reading, writing, and maths. I really don't think it's too much to ask.

      The only problem my proposal has is that I keep coming back around to who, exactly, should be in charge of determining when they've completed an 8th grade education....

      Can we bring back poll tests? I don't care if in practice that's "racist." It probably will be in effect "racist." We need to solve the root issue here. The moment we decided "racism!" was an adequate answer, we failed the entire basis of our society. Tell me why people with darker skin color might have a problem passing a short exam before voting. That will give us a good idea of what we really need to fix.

      Something must be done. I do not want to live in a world where solving a simple system of equations or engaging in very basic linear algebra to find an answer constitutes genius. Yet here we are. It's 2016, and I can't even.

    6. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You have the same issue I keep running into. Again and again, I'm getting more misanthropic and think "We really should stop these people from voting". I went so far as to suggest that indenture should be a thing since some people are actively arguing for concepts that would, in effect, lead to it.

      And with every great idea I run into this roadblock of "who is going to decide whether...". I can tell you my life would be so much easier if I could just be like Trump and his ilk and just think myself wise and knowledgeable enough to decide these matters.

      Alas, I'm a fair man to the detriment of myself way too often...

    7. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by nukenerd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Woman is already nervous about flying, and 15 years of Fox News conditioning takes over

      Someone said she was from Wales. (I cannot check TFA as it's page is so broken that I cannot read the left half of it). I live in Wales myself and can vouch for the fact that we don't get Fox News here.

    8. Re: Paranoia strikes deep by tysonedwards · · Score: 5, Funny

      Haven't you heard? Math is fucking scary! He might have been preparing a pop quiz for people in every third row whose birthdays are divisible by a mersenne prime. Think about how many people could have died!!!

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    9. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is plenty of similar crap in the UK. Maybe she reads the Daily Mail, or watches a bit too much ITN?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by lgw · · Score: 4, Informative

      Arabic numerals, combined with the new evidence he was carrying methods of math instruction, all lead to one conclusion...

      He was a member of Al-j'bra? "Broken bones" - such a menacing name.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    11. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by vivian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What if the guy was actually writing Arabic - why should this be any indication of him being a terrorist?
      How is that any different from him writing in Chinese, German, Japanese, or even just bad handwriting that is not immediately legible by his neighbouring passenger?

      That's the real story here. Merely writing anything should never be considered a terrorist threat unless it is actually making a threat in a language that can be understood by the reader - if you can't understand it then it's clearly not a threat. (Stories about Bob should not count either)

    12. Re: Paranoia strikes deep by Scrab · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or, she might have thought he was a member of Al Gebra, and he was carrying weapons of maths instruction?

      --
      RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
    13. Re:Paranoia strikes deep by dywolf · · Score: 4, Funny

      since we use the Arabic numerals, wasn't he technically writing in Arabic?

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  2. Stupid people punishing smart people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We need to ramp up reverse retaliation on stupid people 100x fold to stop shit like this

    1. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

      At a minimum, stupid people should be shamed for being stupid.

      Trump 2016

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Haven't you noticed? People today are ignorant and uneducated. But what's new is, they are proud of it.

      Ours is a world in which football players, reality TV stars and talentless singer bimbos earn hundreds of times more than Nobel prize-winning scientists, and represent what young people aspire to become when they grow up.

      In a world of self-satisfied, militant, openly avowed crassness, writing equations onboard a plane instead of watching the latest episode of Game of Throne on one's tablet is seen as suspicious. That's more than a little sad.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    3. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At a minimum, stupid people should be shamed for being stupid.

      That woman needs to be shamed for being stupid, but more importantly, for denouncing someone out of the norm to the authorities.

      People used to do that in German occupied countries during WWII: they tipped off the Gestapo that this-or-that person looked or acted Jewish, or didn't seem to like the occupants, etc. That woman is as ugly as the WWII rats - and I might add, the authorities of today are increasingly similar to those of that era as well.

      This is what makes me retch, not her stupidity.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    4. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ours is a world in which football players, reality TV stars and talentless singer bimbos earn hundreds of times more than Nobel prize-winning scientists, and represent what young people aspire to become when they grow up.

      I keep telling people that Idiocracy is a documentary from the future but nobody believes me.

    5. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      She reported someone she thought was suspicious. Fuck her right?
      But when the neighbors of the san benradino shooters didn't say anything it was all "why didn't they say anything".

      The San Bernardino shooters weren't writing things on paper. You do know it's very hard to make paper explode with a pen, right?

      When you report someone because they buy tons of sugar and potassium chlorate, you're doing the right thing.

      When you report someone who buys a lot of firearms and talks about attacking the country, you're doing the right thing.

      When you report someone for writing strange things on paper, you're both an idiot and a disgusting snitch.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    6. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People today are ignorant and uneducated. But what's new is, they are proud of it.

      No, people today are, as always, proud of what they think they are. For instance, you seem to think of yourself an intellectual, and are jumping at the chance to denigrate those you see as different.

      Ours is a world in which football players, reality TV stars and talentless singer bimbos earn hundreds of times more than Nobel prize-winning scientists, and represent what young people aspire to become when they grow up.

      How, exactly, is that different from the the last century? Come to think of it, when exactly did scientists make more than non-scientist celebrities? There are a lot of professions out there, and very few of them fall into any kind of "science" classification. For most of human history, those pure-science careers have always been academic, having no practical application that would affect most peoples' lives. When your job is to move a load of cargo to a different continent to support a colony, you don't care about the amount of redshift in the starlight by which you're navigating. On the other hand, having a widespread reputation that your city is the best at some particular popular sport provides a conversation for a salesman, opening new opportunities for business.

      As I see it, after the atomic bomb brought immediate public attention to scientists, pure science has been getting more celebrated. Today we have more college graduates than ever before, and that number is still rising. We have more STEM careers and more STEM jobs than ever before, and we're even starting to see an increasing number of scientist celebrities like Neil deGrasse Tyson (Whose Twitter account, I'll note, appears second in a Google search for "Neil", below only Wikipedia.)

      In a world of self-satisfied, militant, openly avowed crassness...

      ...which is so much different from a world where we publicly post such intellectual statements as "Phileros is a eunuch", "Epaphra, you are bald!", or "Lesbianus, you defecate and you write, ‘Hello, everyone!’".

      ...writing equations onboard a plane instead of watching the latest episode of Game of Throne on one's tablet is seen as suspicious. That's more than a little sad.

      What's sad is the pervasive suspicion that caused it. This time, it was math equations. Next time, it could be a poet writing in Arabic. Recognizing it as Arabic would be less "ignorant and uneducated", but it'd be just as bad, and would probably result in even more delay. It's the paranoia that's the problem, not stupidity.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    7. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I went to MIT so I've known a lot of smart people. And oddly enough they seem to be nearly as prone to stupid behavior as stupid people.

      Literally the smartest person I know is a woman who had an affair with a married man because he assured her is wife would be OK with it -- and she believed him.

      So when there's something that only a idiot will do, there will be a fair share of smart people doing it. I come to think of this as a distinction between "constitutional" stupidity and "functional" stupidity. Constitutionally smart people can be functionally stupid because they're so used to be right when everyone else around them are wrong, they start to think they're infallible. In my experience there is no dumb like smart person dumb.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    8. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by theArtificial · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ours is a world in which football players, reality TV stars and talentless singer bimbos earn hundreds of times more than Nobel prize-winning scientists, and represent what young people aspire to become when they grow up.

      You may find it insightful to learn about Gaius Appuleius Diocles. He was a famous chariot racer who among other things amassed a fortune valued enough to feed the city of Rome for an entire year. Even in antiquity the entertainers fared quite well.

      --
      Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
    9. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by NotAPK · · Score: 5, Informative

      Since 2011 the air marshal program has killed more people on flights than terrorists have. Sure, the number is pretty low, but it's larger than 0. Those deaths were 100% avoidable.

      On top of this, and I don't have any hard data I'm afraid, but we know that X-Ray exposure can lead to cancer. Since the back-scatter X-Ray scanners were not assessed or approved by the FDA we do not know their power output. But since the power output is more than 0W/cm2 we can conclude that these scanners, used on millions of people daily, over ten years, will have killed a good number of people. How many? I'd be guessing if I suggested anything, it depends on the power output.

      The "new" terahertz/mm wave scanners are also questionable. They have also not been approved by the FDA. Some studies suggest interesting interactions between DNA molecules and THz signals. Obviously more study is required before these devices can be certified as safe. Until then, I refuse to voluntarily let myself be scanned by one. However you may not know that flying in/out of Australia the scan is compulsory (though not always enforced, depending on the chaos of the security queue) and refusal to take the scan when asked will result in a refusal to fly.

    10. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by wickerprints · · Score: 4, Informative

      The essence of the problem is that when a government and media incite fear and paranoia in an undereducated society, and when the true prevalence of threats is already very low, all this does is magnify (in dramatic fashion) the incidence of false positives. And the government knows this, and exploits this, because they are able to leverage that fear to accumulate ever more draconian powers, until the government becomes a police state. The most efficient means of amassing power is to ensure the denial of knowledge to those who have less power than you.

      You can't expect the average citizen to have an understanding of differential equations, but we should expect the average citizen to be able to reason logically rather than emotionally. But people don't because they have been manipulated into becoming fearful sheep, whose unthinking compliance is all but assured by stoking their xenophobia.

      Sadly, this is not going to get better. Punishing the stupid for being stupid may be viscerally satisfying, but ultimately it will be ineffective, because the real reason for their stupidity has far more to do with the overwhelming control exerted by those entities that encourage such stupidity. Expecting the general public to police itself and shame each other ignores the fact that it is the government and the media, all controlled by wealthy elites (who, as you might note, don't need to fly in commercial aircraft), who are orchestrating this sort of behavior in order to ensure their grip on power.

    11. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by r1348 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Gotta appreciate the irony of a Welsh complaining about incomprehensible scribbling...

    12. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Informative

      The essence of the problem is that when a government and media incite fear and paranoia in an undereducated society, and when the true prevalence of threats is already very low, all this does is magnify (in dramatic fashion) the incidence of false positives. And the government knows this, and exploits this, because they are able to leverage that fear to accumulate ever more draconian powers, until the government becomes a police state.

      Exactly this. How many people have been victims of terrorist attacks in the US in the past 10 years? A quick check shows that there were 57 fatalities due to terrorism in the US from 2005 - 2014. (Source) Fifty seven in ten years. Even if we go from 1995 to 2014 (including the 9-11 attacks), there were 3,264. Since that's over 20 years, that means there's an average of about 163 fatalities in the US every year due to terrorism. And that's including 9-11 which was clearly an outlier.

      At 163 a year, "occupant of special agricultural vehicle" results in more deaths than terrorism.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    13. Re:Stupid people punishing smart people by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Literally the smartest person I know is a woman who had an affair with a married man because he assured her is wife would be OK with it -- and she believed him.

      Borderline autistic here (who also happened to go to MIT, though that's not really relevant).

      Seems to me that was the logical thing for her to do. Normally in a case like this, the guy lies and claims he's going to leave/divorce his wife in order to get the woman to sleep with him. By making her think they were going to be together eventually in a long-term relationship, he can trick her into doing something she might not want to do until she's in that long-term relationship (sleep with him). However, the guy's lie in this case makes no such promise. No carrot of a long-term relationship dangled to entice her into doing something she was reluctant to do. So clearly this isn't a case of the woman pining for the guy, and being gullible enough to believe his attempt to trick her into sleeping with him in exchange for some promise.

      The only possibility that leaves is that the woman wanted to sleep with the guy (and vice versa), but was refusing to do so out of respect for his relationship with his wife. The fact that he told her this particular lie instead of the divorce lie suggests that he was aware this was her reason too. When he told her his wife would be OK with them sleeping together, that reason evaporated regardless of whether or not he was lying.

      • If he was telling the truth, then there would be no problem with the two of them sleeping together since the wife would be OK with it.
      • If he was lying, then clearly he does not respect his relationship with his wife. And thus there is no longer any need for the woman to respect that relationship either, and she can just sleep with him like she wanted to.

      Crucially, if it is a lie, responsibility for any negative consequences from the event falls entirely upon the guy. At least to the autistic mind, which doesn't understand the social rule that you're "not supposed to" sleep with someone else's spouse. For such a rule to exist, both partners in the relationship have to adhere to it. And in this case clearly one partner was not adhering to it, and he claimed the other partner was not as well. So if I turn off my "social awkwardness detector" I've built up over 40+ years of trying to make sense of seemingly random social rules and customs, her behavior makes perfect sense. If she was autistic or borderline autistic like me, she probably didn't foresee that she would be criticized for her behavior because she "should have known" you aren't supposed to sleep with someone else's spouse, period.

  3. Bill her! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I hope they billed the idiot for the inconvenience, expense and defamation...

    1. Re:Bill her! by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Informative

      I hope they billed the idiot for the inconvenience, expense and defamation...

      While people are (perhaps rightly) ganging up on this passenger and blaming her for being ignorant, she was only a small part of the problem here. The Washington Post story on this incident notes a comment from Menzio that isn't in the summary here, where Menzio expressed concern about...

      "A security protocol that is too rigid--in the sense that once the whistle is blown everything stops without checks--and relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless. "

      Contrast this incident with what would happen in a sane world.

      What happened here:
      - Woman feigns illness to deplane. Reports suspicious person to authorities. Pilot escorts "terrorist" off plane. Delays follow for hours as suspect is questioned until "threat" is cleared.

      What would happen in a sane world:
      - Woman says to flight attendant, "Can I talk to you for a second?" and gets up from seat. Attendant knows terrorists are much rarer than lightning strikes, so is skeptical. After short conversation, flight attendant walks past, glances at man's paper, sees he's just doing math, and tells woman everything is fine -- return to seat.

      What would happen in a relatively sane world with some greater level of caution:
      - Woman has conversation with flight attendant. Flight attendant walks up to man, sees math. Attendant casually asks, "Hey, sir, what are you working on there?" Guy replies, "Oh, well... economics actually. I'm a prof at Penn." Situation resolved.

      If still suspicious, we could even go a step further -- Attendant: "Oh, can I just check your ticket? We had a question from a passenger about seat numbers?" Attendant checks name of passenger, excuses herself, sends message to security -- they do a Google search and verify guy actually is Ivy League prof in economics, and situation is resolved in 3 minutes instead of hours.

      Bottom line: while we can laugh that this woman's ignorance, the greater problem here is the general paranoia and bureaucratic structure around security theatre that requires disproportionate responses to things that don't deserve them.

    2. Re:Bill her! by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There may be good reasons to have authority to (de)escalate outside the hands of the flight crew.

      Perhaps in some circumstances, but the flight crew should serve as a first-level "sanity check." The chances of having a paranoid or delusional person with an unjustified belief that terrorists are common on planes is orders of magnitude higher than the chances of seeing an actual terrorist on a plane.

      And even if the person isn't mentally ill and imagining evil people everywhere, the flight crews on airplanes at least tend to have some actual training in spotting suspicious activity and handling terrorist situations. Random passengers generally do not.

      Again, if the woman insisted on escalating beyond flight crew, fine -- they could have radioed/telephoned into security and cleared it up in a matter of minutes (in a rational world, that is).

  4. To play the devil's advocate... by damn_registrars · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... I hear the passengers thought he was with the Al-Gebra network - and he was holding potential weapons of math instruction.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:To play the devil's advocate... by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

      "There's this guy in the seat next to me... he's writing some message with Arabic numbers in it."

    2. Re:To play the devil's advocate... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You may already know this, but I'll put this here anyway: The name "algebra" actually *is* Arabic in origin. It comes from "al-jabr" meaning "reunion of broken parts".

    3. Re:To play the devil's advocate... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Middle School Teachers Discovered Supporting Mysterious Al Gebra Network! Entire Courses Devoted to Brainwashing!"

      Next week's headline on CNN.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:To play the devil's advocate... by Sique · · Score: 5, Informative

      It still does. The actual name of the book is Al-kitab al-mukhtasar f hisab al-jabr wa’l-muqabala, which translates to The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing. The putting together (al-jabr) can also be translated to completing. The author is a guy named Muammad ibn Musa, born in the persian region of Chorasmia. So he was mostly called al-Khwarizmi, the Chorasmian, latinized to Algoritmi. He does not only gave us the Algebra (al-jabr), also the Algorithmus: if you do it following the sequential solution descriptions put down by al-Khwarizmi, you are following the Algorithmus. And he even gave us the x we see in all the algebraic equations. When he was posing a question for the thing to solve an equation, he used the arabic term "chai" (thing), which in the first editions of his book in latin letters was written as xai, shortened to x.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  5. Not so sure on this one by onyxruby · · Score: 4, Funny

    There's no shortage of kids in school that will tell you math is terrifying...

  6. better call the feds by slashmydots · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh no! Italians doing math?! They're only supposed to cook pasta and things. That's definitely out of character if you base it solely on cartoonish stereotypes.

  7. In some dark corner of Hell... by hyades1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...Osama is high-fiving Satan under a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  8. terrorist code by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

    To be fair, Professor Menzio (if that is his real name) was using Arabic numerals.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  9. Culture of stupid by Alomex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This has become a trend in American life: the culture of stupid.

    Started with Sarah Palin, who couldn't even name a newspaper she read and people readily accepted that, and it carries on today, with Trump spouting platitudes and messages of hate (many self-contradictory) that wouldn't stand a few seconds of rational though. But he says them with the right anger tone and that's all it matters.

    Next time it will be us geeks&nerds being detained because we are editing some code on our laptops.

    Say no to hate, say no to ignorance.

  10. Re:It's impossible to math to take down a plane... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I came very close to dividing by zero once - my injuries were so severe that I had to be taken to the l'hôpital

  11. it's the ignorants' world now by l3v1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While this story might seem funny at first, it quickly becomes sad. Also very inconvenient for a few hundred people who sit on the plane and get delayed beacuse of an idiot. Lots of people would say better safe than sorry, but this is much more than that: usually ignorance won't hurt many people, but it can reach a point where it will make the lives of the rest of the population a living hell.

    As a sidenote, such stories made me to really think about what I want to read on to/from-US planes, for many years now. Back in the days I mostly read technical stuff, papers, articles, but slowly I switched to "simple" novels with no math and no images. Might be crazy, but I just don't want to be the cause of some idiot delaying the flight - which, as we can see, happens from time to time.

    --
    I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
  12. Economist "doing math" by Latent+Heat · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, it was an economist writing down a differential equation over a tray table.

    An economist -- yeah, as an engineer, it would have been my ethical duty to report this to the authorities.

  13. Asimov's democracy by mpercy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' Isaac Asimov