What is Digg?91 Comments
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -14/+168"Remember this innocent-looking equation: 178212 184112 = 192212 floating by?"
Funnily enough..
.. No. I don't. - whiskeyclone, on 10/12/2007, -4/+96@Azharc, and anyone wondering what Fermat's Last Theorem is.
Fermat came up with some 26 mathimatical theorys which he didn't show solutions to - which were, slowly over time, all proved and became Theorems.
The last theorm was based on Pythagorus Theorem (x^2*y^2=z^2), but his theorm was that this was only true for integers smaller than 2.
x^n y^n = z^n where n is an integer greater than 2 could never be solved.
All he wrote was in the margin of a book "have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."
Fermats proof was never found.
As all other of his Theorems were proved, the great task of solving this last one became the greatest puzzle for mathamtic communities world wide.
Dispite dying in 1645, the search for this proof continued until the 1990s, when eventually it was proved after a 7 year search by one man - but not in any way that would have been availible to Fermat at the time. People are still searching for Fermat's original proof to this day.
I really suggest checking out Simon Singh's fantastic book on the subject "Fermat's Last Theorem", it is an amazing read.
links:
USA: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1841157910/sr=8-7/qid=1149954659/ref=pd_bbs_7/002-6504418-5546416?%5Fencoding=UTF8
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1857026691/203-8059595-8995129
Author: http://www.simonsingh.net/Fermat_Corner.html
Info on FLT:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FermatsLastTheorem.html
http://www.geocities.com/fermatnow/flt/index.htm
http://cgd.best.vwh.net/home/flt/flt01.htm
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.fermat.html - dvdjon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+57http://upitfree.com/v2/out.php/i1322_sd.png
And its not "178212 + 184112 = 192212" its 1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922^12 - Trjn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+58It's amusing how all the writers they mention, worked on Futurama, and injected a lot of mathematical jokes into the series (I have a habit of turning on the commentary >.>)
Simpsons have nerdy jokes, but Futurama is the nerdiest show I've ever seen. - Haroldx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+36homer in 3d (shows the equation): http://youtube.com/watch?v=t_bO9LilNpE
Fermat's Last Theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_last_theorem
sorry for the dumb music, i didn't make it, but look right after he throws the cone; it's right behind him - whiskeyclone, on 10/12/2007, -4/+34@n0va
read my post...
"Dispite dying in 1645, the search for this proof continued until the 1990s, when eventually it was proved after a 7 year search by one man - but not in any way that would have been availible to Fermat at the time."
I think its pretty clear I know who Andrew Wiles is...but people are still looking for the proof that Fermat would have used as he wouldn't have had the work of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, which Wiles proves in 'elliptic curves, modular forms and Galois representations', and thus in proves FLT by relation.
Wiles' proof was over 180 pages long, and whilst that is obviously too long to fit in a margin like Fermat stated, its clear that it isn't the proof he had in mind. It is *that* proof people still look for.
Please bother to read carefully before commenting. Cheers. - diggerphelps, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20proper link, with proper superscripting http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060610/bob8.asp
- Mimorox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20"x^n y^n = z^n where n is an integer greater than 2 could never be solved. "
Actually, its: "There are no non-zero integers x, y, and z such that x^n + y^n = z^n where n is an integer greater than 2." - wikipedia
That little plus sign makes a world of difference. - UNL1M1T3D, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I love watching the commentaries, you end up learning so much.
- breakneckridge, on 10/12/2007, -30/+44From a 1995 episode, back when the Simpsons were still funny.
- Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22"Funnily enough..
.. No. I don't."
"Most viewers surely ignored this bit of mathematical gobbledygook." ;) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12[Homer picks up glasses in toilet and puts them on, pretending to be a nerd]
Homer: The sum of the squares of two sides of an isoceles triangle equals the square of the third side!
Guy in next stall: That's a right triangle, you moron!
Later we find that the glasses belong to Henry Kissinger, who dropped them in the toilet while visiting Mr. Burns at the power plant but is too embarrassed to admit it, not he, the architect of the Camp David Accords. - lollerskates, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Don't forget about the e^(pi*i) = -1 in the background!
Also, P = NP, one of the millenium problems (it only shows P = N, as the last P is cut off, but I'm sure it can't mean anything else :P)! - dergachev, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I believe Andrew Wiles caused quite a stir some years back by proving Fermat's Last theorem, that there is no exponent n > 2 for which A^n + B^n = C^n, where A,B,C,n are natural numbers.
This is kind of interesting if you consider a existence of Pythagorean triples like (3,4,5) and (5,12,13). The theorem proves that such natural number "triples" don't exist for exponents larger than 2. I believe the proof is like 200 pages long. (wikipedia)
My algebra prof at McGill worked with Wiles during that time, so it makes me feel special - Mimorox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Also seen in that video:
46 72 69 6E 6B 20 72 75 6C 65 73 21
ASCII values are:
Frink rules!
8D - masterd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+88191 is a Mersenne prime, a prime number of the form 2^n-1 (8191 = 2^13 - 1).
8128 is the 4th perfect number, which is the sum of its proper positive divisors (8128 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 127 + 254 + 508 + 1016 + 2032 + 4064)
8208 is one of only three numbers that can be written as the sum of fourth powers of its digits: 8208=8^4 + 2^4 + 0^4 + 8^4 - EnricoFermi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13Yeah they really have fallen off the wagon in terms of writing. This is the kind of stuff that made The Simpsons so hilarious in the first place. Subtle, unpredictable, esoteric humor.
I guess they had to dumb it down and make the show more accessible to mainstream viewers as the show became more popular. Ah well, great story, digg++. - Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7From the article:
"In that episode, a singing star tells her estranged baseball-player husband that she will come back to him if he can correctly guess the attendance of that day's ballgame: 8,191, 8,128, or 8,208. At the panel discussion, Westbrook declined to elaborate on just how these numbers are interesting. In the same spirit, we leave that question as a challenge to readers."
Spoiler: http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/simpsonsmath/baseball.html - whiskeyclone, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@Mimorox
Why are people modding his comment down? He's right. I didn't put in the sign. Well spotted; I noticed this long after the edit time was up.
I also mistakenly used a * on the Pythag' example where clearly it should clearly be a , but no-one called me on that one.
Can't believe that 65 people dugg my comment without noticing these mistakes. I was far too worried about the factual content (it's been 3 years since I read about FLT), finding the "^" symbol on this Das Keyboard and whether is was the proper symbol to use to show an indices here (its been 4 years since I did my Physics A level, and I don't find myself using equations or '^' much on an English Lit degree course).
Oh, and I completely forgot about the >0 thing. Mod this guy up. - dergachev, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm also really annoyed at the mis-linking. But remember, for this article to have come to light, someone needed to know about it and wish to share it. Things like this require some economic incentive. Currently, the only thing that exists is people trying to promote their blog and their page rank through Digg. That's why most of digg's posts redirect to blogs.
If Digg were to introduce a better internal incentive system for contributions, then maybe more people would link to the right places. Also shouldn't google punish this practice, since the contents of the blog are misleading? - Buelldozer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10If you don't, you should. Mathematics is the language that describes our universe and makes our high technology society possible.
- AliV, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There is also a string of hexadecimal code that rushes by in the same scene and if you put it in your address bar it says "Frink Rules"
See the below link for more info.
http://www.eeggs.com/items/17723.html - kylewriter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you didn't like the music video version, here's a short clip with the original sound:
http://media.putfile.com/The-Simpsons---3D-Homer - Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Dear Kevin Rose, thank you for the 'Block' button.
Sincerely,
Flashman - cobra1729, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Nice article, computing Pi to 40000 decimal places is especially interesting. You can actually compute this on a PC using a software package like Mathematica:
N[Pi,5]
3.1416
N[Pi,40001]
The last digit (in the instantaneous output) is 1 - ACalcutt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ya...the IE thing didn't work for me either
here is a converter... http://www.vortex.prodigynet.co.uk/misc/ascii_conv.html
just put the "46 72 69 6E 6B 20 72 75 6C 65 73 21" into "Enter hexadecimal ASCII here" and hit calculate - Vladek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Would submitters check/read the story before submission? The article submitted as is has a horrible math formatting mistake "178212 + 184112 = 192212" instead of "1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922^12" which almost made the whole thing non-sensical to me.
Direct links please, instead of advertising your own pet website. No digg. - roadrunner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/simpsonsmath/baseball.html
- EvilDr.X, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Looking through the comments for both this and the Seth MacFarlane story, both on the front page, I know there's some sort of snarky comment to be made, simultaneously bashing the Family Guy fans for being such lowbrow, fart-joke-loving chuckleheads, while also poking fun at Simpsons fans for being such silly, obsessive-compulsive nerds.
But dammit if I can figure out how to do it. - rolandog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Actually Google Disproves the so-called solution:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%281782%5E12 %2B 1841%5E12%29 - 1922%5E12
Interestingly enough, the Googlepedia extension returns an article to Fermats Last Theroem, where the whole thing has already been documented:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_last_theorem#Fermat.27s_last_theorem_in_fiction - griz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Is my browser not indicating the power correctly? Digg shows it wrong as does the article.
I am seeing 178212 + 184112 = 192212 which doesn't take a mathematician to see is wrong.
dvdjon got it right 1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922^12 - SilverRocket, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Very entertaining article.
- SuperCujo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3nerd :)
- CubiX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That episode was one of the coolest ;o)
- EvilTesdall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3i was like...thats not right...178212 + 184112 = 362324
but then i see all the ^12 so n/n - cyberghost232, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2alot more interesting than sony versus the world or intel vs. amd or wii articles or all the same boring ***** digg has on it lately.
- 500freestyle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Interesting article, but it wasn't almost disproven. Like someone else said you can't almost disprove a theorem, and it was set up with the rounding error in mind.
- DrAegoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The linked site seems to have copied and pasted an article from somewhere else. When they did, they screwed up the equations. The original article is here:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060610/bob8.asp
Edit: diggerphelps beat me to it - carbontwelve, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4should this website be copying sciencenews?
- Brett, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Reported as Inaccurate:
178212 184112 != 192212
Ofcourse, neither does 1782^12 1841^12 = 1922^12.
Original correctly formatted article: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060610/bob8.asp - twollamalove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Are you serious? I'd like to call myself a relatively intelligent college graduate who has the respect of his peers for decent mathematical aptitude, and this just makes me feel like a child in comparison.
- Loonacy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Missed it by THAT much."
- ShadowRelic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@rolandog
try again- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%281782%5E12 %2B 1841%5E12%29%5E%281%2F12%29&btnG=Search
(1782^12 1841^12)^(1/12) = 1922 - Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3r dr r!
- SrLnclt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"On the fan discussion site alt.tv.simpsons, however, the equation caused a bit of a stir."
Hate to tell the author of the article - but alt.tv.simpsons is a newsgroup, not a website. - feanor512, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The submitter is the one who mischaracterized it.
- klaupacius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Cool article. I remember each one of those scenarios from both Futurama (I miss you) and Simpsons but was way too lazy to ever look into them.
- ronhunsinger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Darn. I had hoped I'd be able to point out that they showed TWO almost-counterexamples of Fermat's theorem on the Simpsons, but I see the original article does mention the other one: 3987^12 4365^12 = 4472^12. It also explains why they bothered finding a second counterexample, something I never knew. I'll digg it up for that.
They also mention Bender and Flexo getting excited that their serial numbers are both the sum of two cubes:
Flexo's is 3370318 = 49^3 119^3
Bender's is 7216057 = 30^3 193^3
What they miss is that Bender gets it wrong! On the show, his voice actor transposes the first two digits of his serial number, giving it as 2716057. The article perpetuates that mistake. But 2716057 is NOT the sum of two cubes.
I despair for the world's future sometimes. Don't people check their arithmetic any more? - jewel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11782^12+1841^12 = 2,541,210,258,614,589,176,288,669,958,142,428,526,657
1922^12 = 2,541,210,259,314,801,410,819,278,649,643,651,567,616
Close, but still off by 700,212,234,530,608,691,501,223,040,959. - kevinrosesmom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Mathematica is amazing once you get the notation down. I find MATLAB more useful though ;)
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