4 Oct
2013
4 Oct
'13
4:54 p.m.
Yesterday there was an episode of the TV show "Elementary" (as you probably guessed, yet another Sherlock Holmes show), in which the mystery to solve was the murder of an eminent mathematician. And the whole show revolved around the putative solution to the P = NP question. There wasn't much actual math on the show, of course, but at least when one character explained what P = NP meant to another character, it was fairly close to accurate. There were plenty of blackboards filled with what was supposed to be actual math, but they never resembled actual blackboards filled with actual math. I wonder why they can never get that right. --Dan