Why Homer’s humour adds up

IT IS watched mainly for its humour, but f or those i n the know The Simpsons is also a goldmine of mathematical allusions.

The US cartoon show contains more maths-related gags than any other primetime TV programme, according to British author Simon Singh who writes about science and maths.

He said most of the jokes, which are often in background shots, are put in by two of the writers Mike Reiss and Al Jean, both Harvard-educated, who were ‘expressing their love of maths’.

Mr Singh told the Sunday Times Festival of Education at Wellington College, Berkshire, that the show’s first episode had a joke about calculus.

Other episodes show a book bearing Euler’s equation and Homer scribbling an equation relating to the Higgs boson, while Springfield’s Googolplex cinema is a nod to the mathematical term googol.