October 21, 2006

pi is exactly two if you draw a big enough circle

I’ve been reading Dr. Sipser’s “Introduction to the Theory of Computation” and it’s blowing my mind. Unassuming at approximately 400 pages, this book doesn’t screw around. On page 81, in the middle of a proof, it mentioned the following, “the class of regular languages is closed under intersection, which we proved in footnote 3.”

Proved in footnote 3. If you’re reading a book of proofs and even the footnotes have proofs, you’re in for some serious shit. It was at this point that I noticed that both the front and back cover are adorned with proofs, and even the dedication page establishes universal truths. The next 100 pages I would come to know as the most amazing of any textbook ever to escape from any publisher’s ravaged womb of a printing press; God’s existence was proved twice1, disproved three times2, and ultimately shown that in the 3rd dimension3, he could neither be proved nor disproved, though Sipser has shown that what he can’t prove doesn’t matter.

[1] In the 2nd4 and 5th dimensions, respectively.
[2] In the 1st and 4th dimensions, as well as cross-dimensionally on Sundays (“Sunday” doesn’t exist in the 2nd and 5th dimensions, as shown in footnote 68 of Sipser).
[3] See: Our dimension.
[4] See: The Bible.

No Comments

  1. although exactly nothing about mathematical proofs, the concepts so far are definitely “womb ravaging”. i think you’ve just rendered me barren

    Comment by rachel — October 23, 2006 @ 9:58 am

  2. ahem* correction:
    “although I know exactly nothing about proofs” (or proof reading, apparently

    Comment by rachel — October 23, 2006 @ 9:59 am

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