First off, does he really control the math? If he finished second, it could be argued that he could claim the delegates with factors of two and that would of course be half the remaining delegates. He'd win.

He finished third, though, and it is by no means clear that he can secure a majority of delegates with the delegates he has and all the remaining delegates with a factor of three, which is to say a third of the delegates. It is possible that a bonus delegation to reflect the fraction above three that pi represents might bring him clsoer to the total, but he will still not have enough.

Presuming Romney controls the math, though, the question remains as to whether being president of the United States would be a good fit. Math is involved, but a good deal of the mat has been settled. We use arabic numbers, a base 10 system. There is some question of whether we are going to at some point have to recognize that our reliance on binary languages for our digital technology has long term implications for the integrity of a base-10 system, but this will not be an issue until at least one major exporter goes base 2.

He could certainly sieze the day by promising that by the end of this decade, an American would trisect an angle with a straight edge and compass, but thjis will immediately put him into a comflict between engineers and pure scientists who have vested interests in preventing the other from achieving this goal.

Barring that, Romney as president would eventually have to fall back on things like complaining about Microsoft's changes in its Excel application, and fighting off a move by rogue movements among humanities college majors to relax math requirements for a traditional arts and sciences or education degree.

Another bold stroke a President Romney might make would be to appoint a mathematician to a seat on the Supreme Court. The most obvious choice, Purdue professor of mathematics and statistics Herman Rubin, would be easily confirmed, but his age (86) would suggest that his impact ont he court would be minimal. Greater problems would develop if he appointed a younger mathematician.

Nothing about Romney, of course, suggests the kind of wonkishness that most voters would associate with math. However, and this is a big however, it is pretty clear that his private-sector career involved mostly numbers rather than whatever it is that numbers represent. It is too late for romney to take over the Tampa conference, but I would note that at the same time the GOP is gathering in Tampa, the American Mathematical Society will participate in the 8th annual international symposium on geomatric function theory and application, which has the additional cachet of being Alexander the Great's "home state."  Is it too late to establish a presence there? Not at all. The deadline for submitting a response to its call for papers is June 1, which is also the registration deadline.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, it is not so much a question of wehther the math is on Romney's side as whether he will be on math's side. Foregoing Tampa for Macedonia would make a great step forward.