Posts
Dano Nissen ’18, freelance journalist reports, Three Berkeley alumni ponder the connections between advanced scholarship and comedy writing.
 |
FOR CENTURIES, FERMAT’S LAST THEOREM defied mathematicians to prove that there are, in fact, no natural numbers for x, y and z that can satisfy the equation xn+yn=zn when n is greater than 2. Countless great minds tried and failed, until 1995, when mathematician Andrew Wiles, after years of monk-like devotion, provided the undisputed proof once and for all.
That is, until he was seemingly proved wrong, a few years later, by none other than Homer Simpson, whose only monk-like devotion is to doughnuts.
n an episode of The Simpsons called “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” Homer, dreaming of becoming an inventor, toils away in his basement, scrawling on the chalkboard: 398712+436512=447212—an equation that, per M. Fermat, should not, cannot exist.And in fact, it doesn’t. Homer’s math was off. Not by much, but still. D’oh!...
The problem is a variation of a classic pancake combinatorial problem first put forth by the mathematician Jacob Goodman, under the pseudonym Harry Dweighter. As in “harried waiter,” get it?'.
Turns out, math is kinda funny—and so are philosophy and computer science, at least judging by the fact that three Cal alumni with advanced degrees in those subjects—including Cohen, J. Stewart Burns, and Eric Kaplan—have logged long, impressive careers writing for The Simpsons and Futurama, the Matt Groening franchises that practically redefined American humor...
In the resulting episode, Professor Farnsworth works out Keeler’s theorem on screen. Says Cohen, “I believe this is, in all likelihood, the only time in history that a mathematical theorem has served in such a heroic role in a TV comedy.” '
Source:CALIFORNIA
