As well as investigating the geekier side of Springfield, The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets reveals that the writers behind Futurama also snuck a whole heap of nerdy references into the show.
The episode “Möbius Dick” concerns a four dimensional space-whale.
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The name is not just a pun on Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, but also refers to a one-sided mathematical surface known as a Möbius strip. The episode title is the punch line to the obscure joke: “What's non-orientable and lives in the ocean?”
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In “The Honking”, Bender visits a haunted castle and sees the digits 0101100101 written in blood on the wall.
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Bender is more confused than spooked, but when he sees the digits reflected in the mirror as 1010011010 he is immediately terrified. No explanation is given in the dialogue, but those capable of translating binary to decimal would have appreciated that this is 666, the number of the beast.
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The registry number of the Nimbus is BP-1729.
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This is a tribute to an Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan who observed that 1729 is the smallest number that is the sum of two positive cubes in two different ways. (1729 = 10^3 + 9^3 = 12^3 + 1^3.)
Ramanujan first started thinking about the number 1729 when he was visited by the mathematician G. H. Hardy, who had come to see him in a taxi with this number.
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1729 is also Bender's unit number.
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