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The Mathematics of Futurama

mclearn writes "Did you know that the writers of Futurama have a collective set of degrees that would rival most think tanks? Here is a hilarious site on the mathematics of Futurama -- specifically this article (pdf). The same authors have also researched the mathematics of the Simpsons, mentioned on Slashdot long ago."

12 of 481 comments (clear)

  1. Re:SLURM by aslate · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about going to the Google Cache whilst you enjoy your alien-worm excrement!

  2. Mirror by Rufus211 · · Score: 4, Informative

    holy crap that was fast. Site's basically dead after 10 comments. I'm trying to get a mirror up at:
    http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~pnelson/www.mat hsci.appstate.edu/%257Esjg/simpsonsmath/futuramama th/
    So far I have the index page and a few pictures, but they'll go up as I get them.

  3. Re:Degrees? by finkployd · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, executive producer David Cohen has a B.S. in computer science from U.C. Berkeley, and a B.A. in physics from Harvard.

    Finkployd

  4. Re:bit torrent? by slaker · · Score: 4, Informative

    I hate to be a twit, but in this one case I'm gonna say it:
    Buy the DVDs!

    The show was funny and deserves the support of its fans.

    Man, I'll copy DVDs of crappy Hollywood movies I get from Netflix all day long, but those TV Show boxed sets I buy the day they come out. 20 or so hours of entertainment for $50 (or $20 on ebay). They seem like a pretty good deal to me.

    I've come to the conclusion that the only way that anyone will make more TV I'd actually like to watch is if I spend money on the things that have been produced already. They wouldn't keep making Star Trek crap if people weren't buying the old stuff.

    All that said, I see at least the entire first season on suprnova.org right now.

    --
    -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
  5. Re:Mathematical significance of 1729 by SamSim · · Score: 5, Informative

    Erm, neither 13, 123, 93 or 103 are cubes. What you mean is 1729 = 1000 + 729 = 1728 + 1, or 1729 = 10^3 + 9^3 = 12^3 + 1^3.

  6. Re:A vision of the future.... by mog007 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Aliens wiping out the earth was in the pilot episode. When Fry is in the cyro tube it shows the world being destroyed by flying saucers, then being rebuilt to around a bronze age and being destroyed again. I think it was mainly a satire of The Time Machine.

  7. Re:10 SIN by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 5, Informative

    On a similar note, but a bit more subtle is Bender's apartment number: 00100100

    (that's a '$', for the non-ASCII literate)

  8. Re:Quote from the Simpsons by kannibal_klown · · Score: 4, Informative

    HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

    I never laughed so hard during the Simpsons as when I heard the guy say that.

    For a recap, they're talking about how a certain cliff is popular for being used in suicides. And a geek (sounded like the Krusty-Burger fry cook shouts as he's leaping: "Why did they Cancel Futuramaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!?????"

    I think that was a good dig by Groening. Fox really shafted them from the beginning. I think he even said so much in an interview.

    Man, I miss Futurama. I think I'm gonna watch the DVD's again when I get home tonight.

  9. Re:Smart? by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 4, Informative
    The episode had nothing to do with "title flaws", I mean, the guy literally went back in time and had sexual intercourse with his grandmother.

    The "grandfather paradox" (what if I went back in time and killed my grandfather - thus my father would never be born, thus I would never exist, thus I couldn't go back in time and commit the murder, so my grandfather would live, so my father would be born, so...) is a sci-fi cliche. Their take on it was great!

    Fry, trying to protect his "grandfather", ends up killing him, only to be seduced by his grandmother (believing, in his half-witted way, that since his "grandfather" is dead, his grandmother can't really be his grandmother) and becomes his own grandather. It's gross, it's ironic, it's funny.

    --
    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
    You cannot wash away blood with blood
  10. Re:/.'ed already. by jcoleman · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that you can know either the position or velocity of a subatomic particle, but not both. Further refined, the better you estimate velocity, the worse your estimate of position and vice versa.

    Schroedinger's Cat, however, illustrates the wavefunction of a quantum particle...the cat is either alive or dead, but you can't know which until you check. Whether you look or not doesn't influence the cat's mortality rate. You can say that it's the measurement (opening the box) that causes the cat to live or die, but the cat already was in that state when you checked. That is the essential problem raised by this thought experiment.

    Check this page:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%F6dinger%27s_c at

    and note that the word "uncertainty" does not appear. Of course, it might appear on the page, and it might not...you won't know until you click on it. ;)

    So your analogy holds between the webserver and the cat, but the uncertainty principle is not involved. That is what I'm trying to clarify.

    (BTW, this is a stupid argument. Clearly we are both bored at work.)

  11. Re:First Episode by max+cohen · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was always there.

    Wonderful, isn't it?

  12. Re:Degrees? by ParisTG · · Score: 4, Informative

    I guess that explains why Bender is based on the 6502 cpu!