Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Math with Cohen and Groening

Posted by Zonk on from the learning-is-fun dept.

An anonymous reader writes "While math on The Simpsons and math on Futurama has been covered by Slashdot before, new background on some of the scientific references is covered in a long transcription of A Futurama Math Conversation with David X Cohen and a short summary of a math club talk to Matt Groening and a number of writers from both shows. Some amusing tidbits are on these pages - for example, when the Simpsons writers contacted NASA for the 40,000th digit of pi, NASA actually sent them a printout of all 40,000 digits."

10 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Why NASA? by dj245 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't know why they needed NASA for that. Pifast will spit out the first 40,000th digits in a very short time on modern computers. A million is a reasonable benchmarking number for that program. Finding the 40,000th digit in the text file takes longer than calculating it.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    1. Re:Why NASA? by IvyMike · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't know why they needed NASA for that. Pifast will spit out the first 40,000th digits in a very short time on modern computers.

      That was in episode 9F20, which aired 5/6/93. No Pifast, no google; heck, NCSA Mosaic wasn't even around until June.

    2. Re:Why NASA? by realbadjuju · · Score: 1, Informative

      Here... Pi=3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399 3751058209749445923078164062862\ 08998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844 6095505822317253594081284811\ 17450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428 8109756659334461284756482337\ 86783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213 3936072602491412737245870066\ 06315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360 0113305305488204665213841469\ 51941511609433057270365759591953092186117381932611 7931051185480744623799627495\ 67351885752724891227938183011949129833673362440656 6430860213949463952247371907\ 02179860943702770539217176293176752384674818467669 4051320005681271452635608277\ 85771342757789609173637178721468440901224953430146 5495853710507922796892589235\ 42019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960 5187072113499999983729780499\ 51059731732816096318595024459455346908302642522308 2533446850352619311881710100\ 03137838752886587533208381420617177669147303598253 4904287554687311595628638823\ 53787593751957781857780532171226806613001927876611 1959092164201989380952572010\ 65485863278865936153381827968230301952035301852968 9957736225994138912497217752\ 83479131515574857242454150695950829533116861727855 8890750983817546374649393192\ 55060400927701671139009848824012858361603563707660 1047101819429555961989467678\ 37449448255379774726847104047534646208046684259069 4912933136770289891521047521\ 62056966024058038150193511253382430035587640247496 4732639141992726042699227967\ 82354781636009341721641219924586315030286182974555 7067498385054945885869269956\ 90927210797509302955321165344987202755960236480665 4991198818347977535663698074\ 26542527862551818417574672890977772793800081647060 0161452491921732172147723501\ 41441973568548161361157352552133475741849468438523 3239073941433345477624168625\ 18983569485562099219222184272550254256887671790494 6016534668049886272327917860\ 85784383827967976681454100953883786360950680064225 1252051173929848960841284886\ 26945604241965285022210661186306744278622039194945 0471237137869609563643719172\ 87467764657573962413890865832645995813390478027590 0994657640789512694683983525\ 95709825822620522489407726719478268482601476990902 6401363944374553050682034962\ 52451749399651431429809190659250937221696461515709 8583874105978859597729754989\ 30161753928468138268683868942774155991855925245953 9594310499725246808459872736\ 44695848653836736222626099124608051243884390451244 1365497627807977156914359977\ 00129616089441694868555848406353422072225828488648 1584560285060168427394522674\ 67678895252138522549954666727823986456596116354886 2305774564980355936345681743\ 24112515076069479451096596094025228879710893145669 1368672287489405601015033086\ 17928680920874760917824938589009714909675985261365 5497818931297848216829989487\ 22658804857564014270477555132379641451523746234364 5428584447952658678210511413\ 54735739523113427166102135969536231442952484937187 1101457654035902799344037420\ 07310578539062198387447808478489683321445713868751 9435064302184531910484810053\ 70614680674919278191197939952061419663428754440643 7451237181921799983910159195\ 61814675142691239748940907186494231961567945208095 1465502252316038819301420937\ 62137855956638937787083039069792077346722182562599 6615014215030680384477345492\ 02605414665925201497442850732518666002132434088190 710486331734649

    3. Re:Why NASA? by adpowers · · Score: 4, Informative

      And these were techy guys.

      I read most of the article. A few years later (1995), David X Cohen wrote a small program to find numbers that fudge to make it look like Fermat's Last Theorem is false (near misses). He used the program to find three numbers that made the equation roughly equal, as in, if viewed on a calculator will low resolution (only showing 8-9 digits), they answers would appear to be equal. Here is one of the two equations used in the Simpsons:

      1782^12 + 1841^12 =1922^12

      Anyway, my point was that they knew how to write code.

      Andrew

    4. Re:Why NASA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
      Or they could have just Googled up the digits themselves

      Here, let me type out all four digits of the year this happened: 1 9 9 3

  2. Funny? by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    that's why NASA's annual paper budget is $17.3 million.

    $17.3 million? That's stretching it, even for a joke. With about 80 digits per line, 50 lines per page, and 40,000 digits per document, how many trees do ten pages kill?

  3. Re:simpsons by wbren · · Score: 2, Informative
    Hey, i'm a fat slob that gets bomb-ass pussy
    Yeah sure, buddy. You and every other slashdotter here. :-)
    --
    -William Brendel
  4. Re:Ah, so... by fbform · · Score: 3, Informative
    http://3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716 9399375105820974944592.com/.

    --
    Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
  5. Re:they got the digit from two sources by IvyMike · · Score: 2, Informative

    I never knew that the simpsons also asked NASA for the the 40,000th digit of Pi. But I've known for a while that they asked David Bailey for it as well

    Looks like David Bailey worked for NASA in 1993.

  6. Re:Too easy to disprove by Zarhan · · Score: 2, Informative

    The program is at http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/futurama/near miss.html And yes, the later version checks for parity.