Becka Thompson: Numbers don’t lie

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This time is like none other in the history of our great city. Minneapolis stands on the edge of a mathematical cliff — one that few are willing to name aloud. I’m going to tell you plain what others only whisper about behind closed doors: If we don’t act now, we will lose the financial stability that makes every other dream possible.

I’ve been studying and teaching mathematics for most of my life. As a shy child, my mother handed me multiplication flashcards and the rest was history.

“Pure math,” the kind I fell in love with, differs from “applied math.” Pure math flirts with philosophy and physics; applied math leans into finance and rocket ships. I’ve studied both, but I’ve always been drawn to the former because it reaches into the nature of truth itself.

When I see budgets, audits and planning data — whether for schools, parks or the city itself — I see what most people don’t: the story inside the numbers. Years in the classroom taught me how to spot patterns, how to find the variable that’s quietly breaking the equation. I’ve spent decades teaching others to look beyond the surface, to trace where logic fails or where assumptions collapse.

That same discipline is what I bring to public service. The numbers tell me when systems are overbuilt, when departments overlap, when we’re spending twice for half the result. Whether it’s a neighborhood nonprofit struggling to stay solvent or a $2 billion city budget spiraling out of balance, the math always reveals the truth — if you’re willing to look.

Numbers don’t lie; people do. Sometimes to others, sometimes to themselves. People are messy. Anthropology tries to explain that instinct toward chaos. Mathematics does the opposite — it reveals the order beneath it.

There’s an old story about Archimedes, one of the founders of mathematical thought. As soldiers stormed Syracuse, he was reportedly still drawing circles in the sand. When a soldier interrupted him, Archimedes told him not to disturb his diagrams. The soldier killed him on the spot. When the general learned what had happened, he cried out, “You fool! You’ve slain the most intelligent man on earth.”

That story isn’t ancient history — it’s prophecy. Our society has done the same. We have killed our Archimedes — not literally, but politically, intellectually and morally. We silence the analysts, the auditors, the truth-tellers — the ones who see the equation unraveling before collapse. Like that foolish soldier, our leaders strike down what they do not understand, mistaking urgency for strength and domination for progress. They destroy the very minds capable of saving the city because precision slows their performance.

Our city is at a reckoning. It’s not just the trash piling up, boarded windows or fentanyl at the light-rail stop. It’s the math underneath. The equations don’t lie — and in complex systems, no single variable can fix the outcome.

That’s what brought me to run for City Council. I suppose I’m a mechanic of numbers. When your car breaks down, you call a mechanic. When your $2 billion city budget is jammed with variables nobody is tracking, you call a mathematician.

Because the truth we’re afraid to speak is undeniable when numbers are projected on a screen: We are avoiding fixing things, and that delay compounds loss. We are working against the very entities that create growth — and it is bringing us to fracture.

This isn’t about me. The math will play out whether you believe me or not. But this election decides whether we keep pretending the numbers don’t matter — or whether we finally face them, fix them and save our city from insolvency. That’s what’s at stake.

Numbers don’t lie. And this November, neither should we.

Becka Thompson (vote4becka.com) is a former member of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board running for the Minneapolis City Council in Ward 12.

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