In his new book, In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World , Ian Stewart recounts one of the worst jokes in the history of science. You can develop your own setup from first principles once you know the punch line: “The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.” Never mind how Native Americans were in possession of a hippopotamus--the important thing is that the Pythagorean theorem is so well known that comedy writers consider it fair game even if that game couldn’t possibly be found on the correct continent.
[More]
