In an article “Ed Miliband: Self-confessed maths ‘geek’ with a talent for diplomacy”, the Telegraph claimed the new leader of the opposition is a “self-confessed maths ‘geek'” but where, I wondered, did he “confess” it? James Grime adds a corollary: what did he mean by ‘maths geek’, anyway? In other words, we are asking, is he one of us? If so, having a pro-maths (or science) chap as leader of the opposition has to be a good thing.

The key paragraph, which defines the two points of the article title, is:

A self-confessed maths “geek”, his number-crunching skills were highly prized by Brown at the Treasury. But he also gained a reputation as a diplomat, whose skill at defusing internal rows was reportedly much in demand.

But where is the source? I asked the newspaper on Twitter but have yet to hear back. Imran Khan, Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, repeated the claim in the Guardian, but he has no primary source. Of course I’ve Googled, but mostly just find references to the Telegraph article. A little more digging unearthed this BBC article which contains virtually the same paragraph, the one that is the premise for the Telegraph piece, a full ten days earlier. Here, the relevant paragraph is:

A self-confessed Maths “geek”, Ed’s number-crunching skills were highly prized by Gordon Brown at the Treasury but he also gained a reputation as something of a diplomat, whose skill at defusing rows was reportedly much in demand in the never-ending war of attrition between Brownites and Blairites.

But still no source. Setting aside the possibility that the premise of the Telegraph article is based on a quote from the BBC one (at this point, they might both be based on the same source), can anyone help with the primary source? Or can anyone, through other means, answer the question: is Ed a maths geek, and what does he mean by it?

Update 28/09/10: After @ColinTGraham pointed out Ed is on Twitter, I tweeted my question directly. Of course, it’s possible Ed has better things to do with his day, or that he may get one or two other tweets per day to distract from my question.

Update #2 03/10/10: I didn’t get a question from Ed, but the next blog post updates with what I’ve learned.