Canadian grad student pees all over Iraqi-born Swedish teenager’s party

Regular readers will remember this story:

An Iraqi-born 16-year-old reportedly has cracked a math puzzle that has gone unsolved for over 300 years.

Mohamed Altoumaimi, who immigrated to Sweden six years ago, took only four months to find a formula that explains a sequence of calculations known as the Bernoulli numbers, a code that had stumped some of the best experts in the field, Agence France-Presse reported.

Odds are you only remember that story because of this picture…

…and because I offered an Eyes It Willy to whomever correctly cited the movie whence it came. Which reminds me: I still don’t know who the winner, DLJessup, is, and therefore cannot make good on his (her?) prize.

Anyway. Canadian grad student Nathaniel Johnston says it isn’t all that big a deal:

…the “probable solution” (what does that mean, exactly?) was not under some mysterious mathematical lock-and-key. It was well-known and even included on the Wikipedia page describing the Bernoulli numbers (at the time of this writing, it is about halfway down the page under the section titled “Connection with the Worpitzky number”). Uppsala University has even issued an official statement saying that the news articles are false.

So while the boy’s derivation of the formula is indeed impressive considering his age (if he did indeed derive it himself rather than following the steps outlined on the wiki page), the story about this “puzzle” being solved is almost entirely false.

Thanks for the link, Nathaniel. Back atcha!

The thing is, I read that Wikipedia page, and didn’t understand a single thing. They could have put the answer right there in 72-point type with flashing arrows pointing at it, and it wouldn’t have made the tiniest bit of difference.

So. The kid is still smarter than me, but still can’t do this:

At least, I don’t think he can.