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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."
well, it's put to good use ;)
And it got cancelled. Typical.
If the creators of Futurama decided to strike out on their own and sell episodes of the show on the Internet, I'd definitely buy them.
I can only hope.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
+ Run it a few years
+ At the height of it's popularity: cancel it
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= Fox Network
AC comments get piped to
Buy the DVDs, cheapskate. Lots of people worked hard to make Futurama happen, and you want a freebie. How can you justify that?
The fact that they thew a quantum computing reference
Quantum computing? Sure I guess quantum computing may take advantage of such properties, but this phenominon is part of quantum mechanics writ large, not just computing.
You have to figure, though, that there are scores of jokes in Futurama that you don't get, or even notice, because they target different groups on the nerd/pop-culture spectrum.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
If you like Futurama enough to want to see it come back, then buying the DVD is basically the only way to prove to Fox that it's worth it. It tells them a) you love the show and b) you love the show enough to spend good money on it. That last one is probably the more important bit.
Personally, I think the slightly geekier audience of Futurama vs Family guy didn't help its dvd sales; geeks are probably more willing to search out for Bittorrents/kazaa/emule/gnutella of a show, while the mass market is content with dvds.
I'm current wearing a t-shirt that says: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
+ Run "Sunday Afternoon Football" Half an hour late and not air the episode that was skipped.
That one's a Fox trademark... complain nobody watches your show, even when you don't air it.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Sadly, it was more like "too smart to stay on the air." See, American television viewers don't like television shows that make them feel stupid. Instead of watching intelligent, well-written shows like Futurama, they instead watch unintelligent pablum like "American Idol."
It's things like this that make me turn to the Internet, great liberator of properly smart programmes that were cancelled before their time.
Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Doesn't Own Television
Link has been Slashdotted...
Here is the Google cache of the PDF in HTML format.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Futurama isn't coming back, but it could tell Fox that their audience enjoys funny "mature" cartoons (mature as in not kid stuff, but not XXX either).
:)
Of course, nobody should buy any DVD expecting it to count as a "vote" for their favorite show. Buy it if you want it. Don't expect something to come of it.
Schroedinger's Cat is not an illustration of the uncertainty principle, nor is your example.
Schrödinger's Cat was a thought experiment to demonstrate that the uncertainty principle could have macroscopic effects.
/. it. Doesn't that qualify as influencing your "measurement"?
The uncertainty principle dictates that you can't measure something without influencing it (e.g. a thermometer's reservoir doesn't have the same temperature as the liquid you're measuring and therefore will change the temperature a little bit).
My example means you can't (remotely) "measure" if a webserver is still operating, without sending a datapacket to it. If the server was already at the very edge of its capabilities, your ping could push it over the edge and
"It takes balls to do jokes that the majority of people won't get."
Not really, because the majority of people wouldn't have realized that the geek-joke even existed.
But that also highlights the sophistication of their jokes because the jokes are not only selective in who-gets-it, but also who-hears-it.
To the ones who don't get it, it's just filler-dialogue, which is smart since it wont alienate or insult the intelligence of viewers who don't get-it.
There's been a number of good shows that never really had a chance at gaining an audience.
Take FOX's main revenue stream: The Simpsons. It didn't have a whole lot of eyeballs it's first couple of seasons. But FOX was new, and didn't have anything better to try out. It also put the Simpsons on in arguably the best time slots there could possibly be for a new show, with no heavy hitters up against it on other channels. Simpsons eventually drew the crowd. All the news propaganda and churches denouncing the show (highly controversial stuff at the time) didn't hurt either, I admit.
Now take Futurama. They put it in possibly the worst position they could: After NFL games, pre-empted a number of times with no repeats. Heck, even my Tivo couldn't figure out when it was airing half the time. 6 or 7 of the episodes I saw for the first time was when it aired on Cartoon Network, and I loved the show! Family Guy was pretty much the same way, with the same results. They didn't give it much of a chance.
Recently, they did the same to the show Wonderfalls. A very good show.. Produced a whole season, put it in a bad time slot, showed 4 episodes, then pulled it. That's not even a geek humor show, they just killed it dead.
Firefly aired for what, 3 episodes? Maybe 4? And out of order as well? And I believe it was up against ER or something with equally ridiculous high ratings draw too.
Shows have to build an audience. You don't get an instant hit overnight, or even over one season. The success of so many of these shows on DVD shows a couple of things:
a) TV execs are morons who have no idea how to build a fanbase.
b) Brilliant shows do have a large fanbase despite the total BS numbers that Nielsen provides.
More than anything, the fact that shows like Firefly, which didn't even air a whole season, are selling so many DVD copies should show the inaccuracy of the Nielsen system in the first place.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Recently, CN reran the first episode, and I noticed that you could actually see Nibbler's shadow before Fry falls into the cryochamber.
If anyone has the first episode as originally aired, was the shadow always there, or did they edit that into the scene for syndication after they did the episode with the brains?
If it was always there, I'm seriously impressed with the planning that went into the story arc.
I just wanna know if I was the only one that did the caculation of Fry's intrest on his 93 cents? (on a Ti-83 none the less, they used a palm, wusses)
Also, who else here was the only one in the room cracking up hen the professor complained about the quantum finish?
Those little things that go into futurama are what make it worth my time to watch, and that is sying a lot.
--
Honor system DDos. Please "ping -f 24.247.68.40&"
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
"American television viewers don't like television shows that make them feel stupid"
Another theory is that American television viewers who agree to track their own TV usage for the ratings don't watch intelligent TV shows...
Making a joke obscure and about technology doesn't make it sophisticated.
Keep hoping. The animation quality on that show does not come cheap. Do you remember the ill-fated return of The Critic in Flash? It was terrible. If you cant afford good animators you can't afford good writers. You need x amount of capital to get the ball rolling and I believe Fururama was VERY expensive, moreso than the Simpsons.
Time is also against the Futurama fans, whatever "synergy" the creative team had has changed. Its simply not feasible to expect them to suddenly do high-quality work again from such a long hiatus, and thats assuming you can even get all the people.
Production is a very odd thing, when there's a good team they do good work. There are probably two to three episodes of Futurama which I think are low quality and the rest are really just gems. The problem is the network idiots didn't know they were holding a diamond and wouldnt give them a consistant timeslot.
Ideally, the Simpsons should have been cancelled after the first season of Futurama and Futurama would have taken its place. There's only so much you can do with the Simpsons and its simply been done, over and over. Futurama would have given Fox a new platform to create comedy and sell lots of commercials
They dropped the ball, and here we are. Expect the Simpsons to become a horrible shell of what it used to be (many will say its already happened) and a sad "had it coming" cancelation instead of a proud exit.