The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets by Simon Singh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was quite easy to read. The first half is like a mathematical autobiography of the writers. The second half delves more into the Maths. Although at times it felt like, there were only tangential tenuous connections to maths, given that it’s a prime-time sitcom based around an American family you can’t really blame Singh for the content. I do feel as though Singh ran out of interesting material and decided to make it up with stuff about Futurama (Not that I’m complaining).

I really liked learning about the birth of Futurama, I always assumed it was Groening’s compulsion for another series but it was Fox who approached him. The Maths in these shows is not to be sniffed at. In fact a scene from Futurama, inspired a mathematical paper (Keeler’s Theorem).

I also got a couple really interesting book recommendations from it: Flatland, The Prisoner of Zenda and a film recommendation Two Lane Blacktop. There were some really funny quotes about statistics too, sounds like an oxymoron I know but here:

42.7% of all statistics are made up – Steven Wright

Then there is the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches – W. I. E. Gates

The average human has one breast and one testicle – Des Machale

There was also a rather bizarre revelation that Dave Bayer acted as Russel Crowe’s hand double in the blackboard scenes for A Beautiful Mind….

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