Go watch this clip from Robot Chicken. It’s only 10 seconds long, but it’s really funny. Does anyone want to volunteer to figure out if what they’ve written on the board is legitimate? (Warning: The clip is safe for all audiences, but no guarantees are made for the rest of the site.)
February 12, 2008 at 9:51 am |
Well, the equation on the top line is not an identity (for one thing, there is no parameter “c” on the right hand side, while there is one in the integrand on the left). But perhaps they are trying to find conditions on a, b, c, and m for which the equation is valid?
February 12, 2008 at 11:01 am |
It is similar to the identity for the integral on the left-hand side. It’s #245 on p431 in the 23rd edition of CRC’s Standard Mathematical Tables (1975).
February 13, 2008 at 10:19 am |
It’s not a real equation. We started with a real equation and it didn’t look difficult enough, and it didn’t fill enough of the chalkboard, so we basically “Hollywood-ed” it by adding more numbers so that it looked ridiculous. Next time we’ll but up a real math problem.
February 14, 2008 at 9:06 pm |
Thanks for clearing that up, Chris. I’m looking forward to the next equation 🙂