- Teakettle principle
The teakettle principle is a
colloquialism used among certain communities ofmathematician s. 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-runningjoke in the mathematical community involving a mathematician and anengineer .cite book |title= Combinatorial Optimization: Networks and Matroids |last= Lawler |first= Eugene |publisher=Dover Publications |year= 2001 |origyear= 1976 |isbn= 0486414531 |pages= "p". 13]The joke involves a mathematician and an engineer arriving in the
kitchen to maketea ; both fill a pot withwater , put the pot on thestove and boil water. Not a big problem to solve. 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".See also
*
Mathematical joke References
External links
* [http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1397172 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 )
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