"The writing staff held three Ph.D.s, seven master's degrees, and cumulatively had more than 50 years at Harvard University. Series writer Patric M. Verrone stated, "we were easily the most overeducated cartoon writers in history"." [1]
When I wrote VB, ASP and VBA scrips my error handling statement was always:
On Error Goto Hell
And then the last part of the routine has a block labeled "Hell:". One could use any label, but this seemed best to me -- when not using On Error Resume Next
They probably knew enough to know that it wouldn't be a valid program, but it's the best compromise, being recognizable and still funny for the lay person. Any modification to it would make it distinctly less funny.
Because the theorem itself isn't funny. The context is. If the theorem was funny but not accurate, I'd be defending that too. The show is a comedy first and foremost.
While introducing the mathematic proof in the show is cool, this exact puzzle also came up in an episode of Stargate SG-1 season 2, which predates this Futurama episode by about 10 years.
No, that scene itself. So many times me and other devs have gone to the whiteboard to draw up and create an algorithm for some ridiculous thing exactly like this.
A lot of authors on early Simpsons and all of Futurama were heavily involved in math and other hard sciences. This is well known amongst fans.
What I started wondering looking at this article, is, what made Matt Groening associate himself with math PhDs from Ivy League universities when putting together a comedy team?
I totally think this is it. I had all sorts of Life in Hell merch in college in the 80s. My SO still wears the Bongo (rabbit with one ear) tee I got her 35 years ago.
This theorem and a whole bunch of other cool math easter eggs are described in The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets by Simon Singh, which I highly recommend. Despite the name, it includes some stories from Futurama, which makes sense given how similar the writing teams were.
It's incredible how many sophisticated jokes the writers managed to work in! I really love how both shows were able to be funny without dumbing down the content.
The Futurama DVD commentary is amongst the funniest/most interesting commentaries I've ever listened to.
It's that perfect mix of funny and fascinating.
On a side note, I feel like commentary is something we've lost with the move to streaming services. Would love to see it added as a feature to Netflix/Amazon Prime/etc
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama#Writing