Singh ( Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe, 2005, etc.) is a lively writer with an easy, unthreatening manner who takes readers smoothly through some fairly thorny mathematics. Often in the show, this will fly by as sight gags, but just as often it is faced head-on, as when Lisa tackles statistics or Homer ponders three dimensions. Perhaps Simpsons nerds have known this all along, but for the rest of us who think of the TV show as primarily a sharp piece of comic writing, it may come as a surprise to learn that it is riddled with sophisticated mathematics, including rubber sheet geometry, the puzzle of Rubik’s Cube, Fermat’s last theorem (“embedded within a narrative that explores the complexities of higher-dimensional geometry”), Mersenne prime numbers and plenty of other obscure material. Higher math for dummies, courtesy of The Simpsons.
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