Number Theory in Japan

Lake Ashi, Hakone, Japan

A few weeks ago I was in Hakone, Japan, in the shadow of Mt. Fuji, famous for its hot springs. I was playing cards with some backpackers when an American couple in their 20s, Kevin and Jenny, came in. We asked if they wanted to join us. They demurred. I asked what they did. Kevin turned out to be a programer, board game designer, and former pro-StarCraft gamer. Jenny was working on a math Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon.​

So they were huge nerds, but so am I. In college I originally meant to study math and physics and become a physicist. I mentioned this to Jenny as the card game wound down and Kevin and I began to play Go, the ancient chess (except far more complex than chess) game that Confucius used to play. Then somehow I mentioned that many of the writers on The Simpsons were mathematicians and wrote many a math joke into the show. “There was one, for example,” I said, “about taxicab numbers.” (Actually I was wrong about this - it was Futurama.)

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