A Proof of the Braininess of "The Simpsons" and "Futurama"

Occasionally the mathematics does wind more deeply into the story, most notably in the 2010 “Futurama” episode “The Prisoner of Benda.” The plot turns on a device called the Mind-Switcher, which performs just the function its name suggests; over the course of the episode, as the apparatus is used with greater and greater abandon, the minds of the characters shuttle from body to body like singles switching bedrooms in a French farce. By the end, not a single consciousness remains in its proper skull. What’s worse, the characters can’t just retrace their steps to reunite each mind with its original body; the Mind-Switcher, having operated on a pair of minds, isn’t allowed to switch the same two minds again.

Ken Keeler, who wrote the episode, realized that in order to get everything sorted out it might be necessary to introduce new characters, whose bodies could be used as waystations through which the minds could find their way home. An ordinary writer would have been content simply to find a way out of the episode. But Keeler became obsessed with the problem in its full generality, finally composing a proof that, no matter how wild the original fiesta of Mind-Switching, the damage can always be repaired once two new people are added to the system. This question may sound abstruse, but the part of math it belongs to — “combinatorial group theory” — is one of the hottest things going at the moment, with major advances popping up everywhere from Paris to Los Angeles. Keeler’s theorem isn’t one of those big advances, but it’s a real theorem, certainly the deepest piece of mathematics ever featured in a prime-time sitcom.

-- Jordan Ellenberg, "Mathematics and Homer Simpson" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2013/12/20/ef1bfaa6-5b9a-11e3-bf7e-f567ee61ae21_print.html)