Teakettle principle
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The teakettle principle is a colloquialism used among certain communities of mathematicians. It refers to the practice, common among mathematicians, of reducing a given problem to one that has been solved previously. The name itself arises from a long-running joke in the mathematical community involving a mathematician and an engineer.[1]
The joke involves a mathematician and an engineer arriving in the kitchen to make tea; both fill a pot with water, put the pot on the stove and boil water – a trivial problem. The next day, they go to make tea again, but find that the pot is already full of water. The engineer will put the pot on the stove; the mathematician will throw out the water – "reducing the problem to a previously solved problem".
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Lawler, Eugene (2001) [1976]. Combinatorial Optimization: Networks and Matroids. Dover Publications. p. p. 13. ISBN 0486414531.
[edit] External links
- Same statement (with joke) at everything2.com, claiming to be a citation from the book Combinatorics by N Ya. Vilenkin. (accessed on 2007-02-04)
