100cia.com— This is so cool; remember the Halloween episode where two dimensional Homer gets sucked into the third dimension? Remember this innocent-looking equation: 178212 + 184112 = 192212 floating by?
Jun 10, 2006View in Crawl 4
Darn. 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 = 49^3 119^3Bender's is 7216057 = 30^3 193^3What 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?
Just saw the Simpsons episode in question on Fox late-night reruns. Never would have caught the equation without this rambling discussion. Thanks digg.com!
Fermat's last conjecture I think is only a partial thought. Of course there are no solutions to two cubes added to form a third. Math doesn't work that way. It only works for squares simply because you have TWO numbers raised to the power of TWO being added form another number raised to the power of TWO. It's obvious you need the same number of elements as the power you are raising them to... and then you will have an infinite number of solutions. For example A^3+B^3+C^3=D^3 and for a power of 4 you have to add one more time A^4+B^4+C^4+D^4=E^4 and so forth and on and on... with infinite solutions and without that match you have no solutions at all.... for exampleA^4+B^4+C^4=D^4.... has no solutions.. conjecture.
Closed AccountJun 11, 2006
r dr r!
ronhunsingerJun 12, 2006
Darn. 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 = 49^3 119^3Bender's is 7216057 = 30^3 193^3What 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?
klaupaciusJun 12, 2006
Cool 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.
barnstormerJun 12, 2006
The right side is greater than the left by 0.00000004413... or about 44 billionths.Close enough for government work.
wrodgers021Jun 29, 2006
Just saw the Simpsons episode in question on Fox late-night reruns. Never would have caught the equation without this rambling discussion. Thanks digg.com!
fluxionsJul 27, 2006
They say, Futurama had math references all over the place, and thats why its not on the air anymore. Thats BS, Futurama was genius.
hhdogwarriorJan 28, 2007
Fermat's last conjecture I think is only a partial thought. Of course there are no solutions to two cubes added to form a third. Math doesn't work that way. It only works for squares simply because you have TWO numbers raised to the power of TWO being added form another number raised to the power of TWO. It's obvious you need the same number of elements as the power you are raising them to... and then you will have an infinite number of solutions. For example A^3+B^3+C^3=D^3 and for a power of 4 you have to add one more time A^4+B^4+C^4+D^4=E^4 and so forth and on and on... with infinite solutions and without that match you have no solutions at all.... for exampleA^4+B^4+C^4=D^4.... has no solutions.. conjecture.
laudatedominumJun 25, 2008
"A^4+B^4+C^4=D^4.... has no solutions.. conjecture."That's wrong.187 960^4 + 2 682 440^4 + 15 365 639^4 = 20 615 673^4Noam Elkies has actually proved that A^4+B^4+C^4=D^4 has infinite answers