Simpson

My recent leisure reading is The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets by Simon Singh.

This is a small book that summarizes many mathematical references appeared in The Simpsons, the famous American animated sitcom. Since many of the writers of the cartoon actually have an exceptional background related to mathematics or computer science, Singh tries to explain and analyze the underlying mathematical concepts and discuss how those games with numbers are related to the corresponding episodes of The Simpsons.

Is it difficult to read? Not quite. I believe anyone who has studied mathematics in high school could understand most of the jokes and explanation.

PS. A mathematical question that appears several time throughout the book is the P versus NP problem. Philosophically, the question could be translated into a single statement: Does all question have a simple solution?

Oh, it doesn't seem to be the case when I look at Admiralty.