Futurama Writer Created And Proved A Brand New Math Theorem Just For Episode | Hacker News Reader

Futurama Writer Created And Proved A Brand New Math Theorem Just For Episode

geekosystem.com

242 pointsghurlman31 comments

While I appreciate the authentic geekiness that infused that episode, the new season of Futurama (and indeed every Futurama production since the last season of the original run) has lost its feel for dialog, most of the spark between the original characters, and its sense of which gags to work into the storyline and how. It's also become much more "blue", and in a much less subtle way (sex was always a subtext of its humor, but was usually handled far more gracefully --- like in the episode where Fry drinks the emperor).

I've been very disappointed by the new season. The only episode I found to be watchable was the one with the time machine.

What does becoming blue mean?

The core driver of the humor is sex. Most blue humor wouldn't be funny if cultural norms shifted even slightly; it's superficially, but not structurally, humorous.

Thanks for the explanation. Here is the relevant Wikipedia article with a whole universe of humor related terms that I (non-native speaker) didn't know before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-color_humor

FWIW, I'm a natve speaker and havenever heard of blue humor before. You learn something new every day.

That is interesting as the only episode I actually liked was the bender and hermes adventure (minus some jokes in the beginning).

I think comedy central has pushed them or they feel the need to be more like comedy centrals raunchier comedies and that just isn't futurama.

The movies were also by far much much better than this new season and they weren't as great as the old episodes which are still fun to watch once in a while, kind of makes me sad but it is also somewhat expected.

My impression is that they simply have a free-er hand, and the absence of external restraint doesn't always lead to better work.

While I think this season's not as good as seasons previous, I also think you're being too harsh--and I think the quality of writing is getting better.

The Late Philip J. Fry (the time machine one), as you admitted, was hilarious. They worked in references to piles of classic science fiction movies; the show covered time travel, theories of the nature of time and the universe, paradoxes, and predestination; and the writing was tight and funny. So we seem to agree that one was solid.

A Clockwork Origin, two episodes later, pulled together the panspermia hypothesis, the debate between intelligent design and evolution, the singularity, and clear send-ups to Second Variety and Planet of the Apes.

Proposition Infinity was more a political than a science fiction episode (and we had those in the earlier seasons, too--the garbage sphere, the women's planet, etc.), but I thought did a hilarious send-up of Proposition 8, religious responses to homosexuality, San Francisco gay pride parades, and so on.

And while I agree that episodes from this season are in general more vulgar than average from previous Futurama seasons, I also think you're viewing those seasons through rose-colored glasses. The sex in this episode was no more explicit than Fry and Leela in Tales of Interest, Professor Farnsworth's seduction of Mom in Mother's Day, or half a dozen other episodes, and while I thought the third episode of the season (Attack of the Killer App) was disgusting, I don't honestly think it was more disgusting than Fry and the Slurm Factory, where it's revealed that Slurm is slug poop.

Futurama's always mixed highbrow with lowbrow. I agree they've gotten raunchier, and I think it hurts the humor. But I think writing the whole season off as a loss is extremely unfair.

Fry and the Slurm Factory was a brilliant episode; it mashed up Studs McKenzie with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was gross, but in a structurally comical way.

Attack of the Killer App was just unfunny, in the same sense as Bill Maher is unfunny compared to Jon Stewart; it's a humor based on superficial recognition of current events, not keen observation.

I feel as though some of the episodes are bizarrely topical, like references to the app store, The Da Vinci Code... all things which would have been topical even a few years ago, when the show was cancelled. My theory is they are lingering, filler ideas they had to get out of the way in order to air brilliant pieces of work like A Clockwork Origin and The Late Philip J. Fry.

Not necessarily filler. Just put in the queue and never removed?

The first couple of episodes in most series are a little weak. I mean, Futurama's already back in pretty good form, especially after the low point that was most of the movies.

"... Futurama's always mixed highbrow with lowbrow. ..."

and language is the best bit. Got a Russian mate to translate for me a great Bender quote: "... Поцелуйте (Kiss) мой (my) блестящий (shiny) металлический (metal) зад (ass). ..." ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/nothingpersonal/4484582814/

A Clockwork Origin, two episodes later, pulled together the panspermia hypothesis, the debate between intelligent design and evolution, the singularity, and clear send-ups to Second Variety and Planet of the Apes.

Plus, Bender learned how to knit!

Is it possible you're experiencing worst episode ever! syndrome? I think after a while people just get sick of these shows and when you look back in retrospect you have dozens of hours of past seasons to cherry pick good moments/episodes from so they tend to stand out as being better. Maybe when the season concludes they will have the same ratio of good moments/episodes as any other season? I only saw the first episode of the new season. I'm waiting to just watch them all once the season is over. I find that to be one of the best remedies for worst episode ever! syndrome.

Geeks will find a way to ruin anything.

I think they've been hit and miss. Some I liked a lot. Some I didn't like so much. I actually do like the direction they're going...

- No more "It's that wacky bender!" every time they can't come up with an in-context joke. That was a big problem with the movies.

- Finally had Fry and Leela hook up, so we won't have to deal with any more of those whiny episodes. Best thing to happen to TV since Jim and Pam got together.

- I liked the addition of Nibbler to the crew. (Although now that's looking like it got zapped with the magical sitcom history-erasing reset button.)

- No lame extended musical numbers. (And now that I've said that, I'm sure they're be a six minute one next week...)

- And most of all, we got to see Scruffy's serious side...

I agree. Like everyone else I was really excited when the new series was announced but the jokes and characters feel like they've been written from bullet points on a whiteboard. Bender steals, Amy is sexy, etc.

But what bugs me the most is that South Park already did it. These episodes seem to close with some life lesson the writers feel we need to learn. Even South Park is getting ridiculous with it's preaching and Futurama should just stop trying.

Speaking of the episode with the time machine. Wouldn't they have changed history dramatically by killing Hitler? Maybe that's why they missed the second time around but the professor should know better.

If I were them I'd have gone back to visit the land of the hot chicks with no guys and the backwards time machine instead of going straight home. Of course, I'd only be going there to get the backwards time machine.

> Wouldn't they have changed history dramatically by killing Hitler?

Who cares, it was hilarious. There's a time for accuracy and being PC, and there's a time for little humor gems, even if they aren't perfectly congruous with what a normal person would do!

Although I did think they missed a golden opportunity. When he 'missed', He should have said, "oops, I missed. I hit JFK instead" (JFK assassination)

I've LaTeX-ed the screenshot for your perusal: http://imgur.com/HlcWm.png

(Probably some typos. Feel free to fix: http://pastebin.ca/1922336)

So can someone with more math knowledge comment on how "Brand New" this theorem is? Comparing the Geekosystem post with the tone of the original APS article, it sure feels like a certain amount of breathless hyperbole was added to the former...

The article isn't very accurate. In the episode, two people can swap minds, but the same two minds cannot be swapped twice. The article says that "after enough swaps everyone can find their original body." But this is incorrect. The actual math problem solved says that by adding two people to the pool (the harlem globetrotters in the episode) you can then always find a way for everyone to swap into their original bodies.

The math proof shows this by starting with an arbitrary permutation of minds (pi) for n people, then adds two new people x and y to show that there now exists another permutation of minds (sigma) that "undoes" the original permutation. This means there's a way for everyone to get their bodies back.

Without the addition of two people x and y there is no such guarantee.

To understand the details you'll need to know about group theory. Specifically permutations. This isn't a "deep" problem. But it is awesome that it's correct and on TV!

>To understand the details you'll need to know about group theory.

I wrote up an algorithm to swap the minds back, and then proved its correctness, and its running time. It might be more understandable than the group theory proof. It's in a comment thread on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/d3ar3/tonights_futuram...

Not really "brand new" at all. It wouldn't be out of place in the first week of an Algebra course.

You don't really need much math background to understand the proof. At the top, where he writes pi = (top line of numbers, bottom line of numbers), he means the permutation that sends the first element to the second place, the second element to the third place, and so on.

If you think about it, every permutation can be split into cycles of this form (a -> b, b-> c, c->d, ..., e->a). One of these cycles, that's of length K, is called a "K-Cycle".

I think that's the only terminology you need to follow the proof.

Talk about derivative work!

Actually group theory is discrete and algebraic.

i'm not sure what you mean by discrete.

SO(3) (the group of rotations) is not discrete in any sense i can think of.

some groups have a discrete topology, but not all by any means... are you referring to cayley's theorem?

Discrete as in you'll never take a derivative of anything, so the parent pun comment is meaningless. At least in the subset of group theory I studied, no continuous functions were used which are the only objects that derivatives are defined on.

In other news, (bad) pun threads have come to hacker news. I guess it was always a matter of time.

It so happens that SO(3), being a Lie group, has a well-defined space of derivatives: its associated Lie algebra so(3) [notice lower case]. In fact, the generators of the group fundamentally arise from the derivatives of rotations around the identity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_group#The_Lie_algebra_assoc...

This has been the worst pun-thread ever.

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