|
MatheMUSEments
The
Simpsons and Mathematics
By Ivars Peterson
Muse, November/December 2006, p. 44.
Many people watch The Simpsons for its zany
characters, political jokes, and outrageous situations. But other
viewers keep a sharp eye out for references to mathematics. Really.
Several of the show's writers studied math or computer
science in college. And, from time to time, they just can't resist
sneaking in a mathematical bit or two (or three). But, unless you're
looking carefully, these inside jokes can be easy to miss.
For example, during the final episode of the 2005-2006
season, which aired in May, an angry singing star tells her baseball-player
husband that she will come back to him only if he can correctly guess
the attendance of the day's ball game: 8128, 8191, or 8208? But these
numbers aren't just any old numbers. Each one is mathematically special.
The first choice, 8128, is know as a perfect number.
The smallest perfect number is 6. Its divisors are 1, 2, and 3. When
you add up the divisors of a perfect number, you get the number itself:
1 + 2 + 3 = 6. This doesn't happen for most numbers; perfect numbers
are rare. The second smallest perfect number is 28, the third is 496,
and the fourth is 8128.
The second choice, 8191, is a prime number. In other
words, it's evenly divsible only by itself and 1. In fact, it's a
special type of prime known as a Mersenne prime. You get this number
by multiplying 2 by itself 13 times, then subtracting 1. All Mersenne
primes are prime-number powers of 2 minus 1.
The third choice, 8208, is a special four-digit number.
If you multiply each digit by itself four times, then add up the results,
you get the number (8 x 8 x 8 x 8) + (2 x 2 x 2 x 2) + (0 x 0 x 0
x 0) + (8 x 8 x 8 x 8) = 8208. It's one of only three four-digit numbers
that can be written as the sum of the fourth powers of their digits.
The others are 1634 and 9474.
Whew! You probably didn't catch any of that when you
saw the show. But mathematicians Sarah J. Greenwald of Appalachian
State University and Andrew Nestler of Santa Monica College have been
keeping a careful watch, tracking the math in The Simpsons
for years. Their Web site, simpsonsmath.com, lists math references
episode-by-episode. Last April, the show even aired a program devoted
entirely to math—well, OK, and laughs, too. It was called "Girls
Just Want to Have Sums."
Now you have yet another reason—one maybe even
your teachers will endorse—to watch all those Simpsons
reruns.
For more about math in The Simpsons, see
"Springfield Theory."
|
SNK RSS Feed 
