12 July, 2010

von Neumann's words come true

Everyone heard a famous quote of John von Neumann: "with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk".

A friend of mine Valera Yundin sent me a link to an awesome article:

Jürgen Mayer, Khaled Khairy, Jonathon Howard, "Drawing an elephant with four complex parameters", Am. J. Phys. 78, 648 (2010)

And it works!


That is definitely something to highlight in the Max Planck Research magazine :-)


Take care,

Misha

2 comments:

Anil said...

Ah, but it is eight real parameters.

Lemeshko said...

Did von Neuman mention that the parameters should be real? :-)