My post
on Fermat's last theorem last week reminded me of my personal all-time
favorite math parody, a Chicago Tribune column
written by Eric Zorn.
Zorn, grandson of the mathematician Max
Zorn, wrote this column that put Wiles' proof of Fermat in a
context of the Chicago Bulls basketball team winning a recent
championship. I was in the CS department at the University of Chicago
during that time and the parallels hit home for me: "Andrew Wiles" = "Michael
Jordan", "Yoichi Miyaoka" = "Charles Barkley", "Rie-Peat" =
"Three-peat", "Doing set theory in a New Jersey library" = "Gambling
in Atlantic City", etc. You get the picture.
Or maybe you had to be there. After this article made the email
rounds, one European professor asked me if there really were graduate
students rioting in Chicago. Go figure.
