Simpsons Guide to Math

tu-tone writes "The LA times has done an article titled "Simpsons analysts show how math figures into episodes" based off of work done by two professors Andrew Nestler and Sarah J. Greenwald. The work is a Guide to Appearances of Mathematics and Mathematicians on "The Simpsons" . They even gave a talk on it at Harvey Mudd College. It's a fun read." There's a transcript of one of their presentations available.

Comments

Re:That's not the point

[babbage]

You know, now that you mention it my brother (now a college junior) did exactly this in high school. I forget what the impetus for it was -- I'll have to ask next time I see him -- but he and a classmate did a presentation on the physics of the Simpsons in the form of a lesson to younger students. At first I thought it was a little silly (in a good way mind you :), but it seems like he made all the same sorts of points that you did: the show has been around forever, and has all kinds of good references to scientific & mathematical material in there.

Still, my favorite "damn the writers of the Simpsons are over-educated genuses" gag is from one of the old Halloween episodes, in which they re-created Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven." If you'll recall, the bird in that show was drawn with Bart's head, so Bart = Raven. Look up the name Bart in a baby book and you'll find that it's the nickname for one of two longer names: Bartholemew, and (much less commonly of course) Bartram (or is it Bertram? I forget the spelling, it's been a while now...). And if you look up Bartram, you'll find that it's an Old English word referring to a person that handles ...ravens. [Kind of the same way that a falconer is a person that keeps & takes care of falcons, a ravener or "bartram" is a person that keeps ravens.] Now this is more than a little esoteric, and it could well be a coincidence (they had to get Bart in there somewhere, right?), but considering how often little gags like this crop up my bet is that it was deliberate. And my guess is that, of all the millions of people that watch the Simpsons, and of all the dozens that know how to speak Old English, there had to be no more than a handful of people that watched that episode, got the joke, realized that millions of others would have totally missed it, and laughed their damn heads off.... :)

Ever since I came across that, I've come to believe more and more strongly that Simpsons is our modern day Shakespeare. This gag is at least on par with Hamlet's "country matters" line in cleverness, and they manage to do it all the time. Will the show be remembered for as long or as fondly as Shakespeare? Who knows, but it could well happen and I wouldn't be surprised at all.