Blogpost #5: The Simpsons' Mathematical Secrets

    When I was a kid, I really had a hard time understanding Math. It was very difficult for me. I have to memorize all the multiples of 2 to 12 when I was in 1st grade. What I hate most about Math when I was in elementary is solving "Problem Solving". Because you have to read and analyze the given information and determine the equation that should be used in order to have the correct answer. I never really enjoy Math when I was a kid. Maybe the reason why I did not enjoy Math is because I never see it as a fun subject. I see it as a boring subject maybe that's the reason but I did enjoy Math when I was in high-school. It was my favorite subject because at that time I easily understand Math. 

     When I was looking for more articles for my blog, I have found an article by Simon Singh entitled "The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks". This really interest me a lot because I was not expecting that a famous sitcom has its mathematical secrets which is very helpful for the viewers. 

    According to that article, The Simpsons had its mathematical secrets which is written by math geeks. Al Jean and Jeff Westbrook are just two of the writers who applied Math in the famous sitcom The Simpsons. Their passion for numbers are their way to apply Math in the show.

    One of the episode where they apply Math on it is "Marge and Homer Turn a Couple Play". The scene was like this. Tabitha Vixx, who is the wife of the baseball star Buck Mitchell and was experiencing marital difficulties, was at the Springfield Stadium. At that stadium, she publicly proclaims her love for his husband, Buck Mitchell. Tabitha appeared on the jumbo visual screen. After she appeared on the screen, a question was displayed asking the baseball fans to guess the number of people who attend the baseball game today. 

     As you can see in the picture shown on the left, you can see that you have three options (not including "D"). These three options represents different kins of numbers. 

    

      For Letter A, this is a perfect number. A perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its divisor. If we are going to analyze it, the divisor of 8128 is 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 127, 254, 508, 1016, 2032, and 4064. If we are going to add it all the answer would be  equal to 8128.

       For letter B, this is a narcissistic number. A narcissi tic number is a number that is equal to the sum of its own digits which are raised to the power of how many digits are there. If we are going to analyze it, the are four digits in the number 8208. each digit will be raised to the power of 4 because the number has only four digits. So the equation would be like this:

        84 + 24 + 04 + 84 = 8,208.

       For letter C, this is a prime number. A prime number is a number greater than 1 and has only a divisor of 1 and the number itself.

       This is just one of the episode where they applied math on it but there are still more episode where the are still mathematical secrets on it.

   Other episodes like "Money Bart" and "Colonel Homer" also shows mathematical equation.

      In "Money Bart", Lisa was going over a pile of technical books. Then she eventually said the line: "I haven't seen this many books in a dugout since Albert Einstein went canoeing." If we are going to analyze the episode and watch it more clearly, while Lisa is saying the line, we will spot the book titled "eiπ + 1 = 0". This equation represents the five fundamental ingredients of mathematics (0, 1, e, i, π)

      In "Colonel Homer",  The first scene of the episode shows a local movie theatre called Springfield Googolplex. The word Googol is a large number. Its figure is 1 and it is followed by 100 zeros while the word Googolplex is larger than googol but still is a finite number. This word Googol came from Edward Kasner, an american mathematician. The Googol all started when Edward Kasner was having a conversation with his nephew when he mentioned that it would be useful to label and describe the number 1 raised to the power of 100.Then he suggested to word Googol to label that kind of large number.

         I always questioned Math when I was a kid and after reading this article I finally realized that Math is a helpful subject to us. Math is not boring. It is fun. We just say that it is boring because we never try to embrace it or see it as a fun subject. This article let me realize that Math can be fun.