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==In popular culture== |
==In popular culture== |
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*The mockumentary series [[Brass Eye]] includes a scene where the presenter, Chris Morris, talks about the unethical production of beef from spherical cows. |
*The mockumentary series [[Brass Eye]] includes a scene where the presenter, Chris Morris, talks about the unethical production of beef from spherical cows. |
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*In the sitcom ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'', in Season 1 Episode 9<ref>{{cite web |
*In the sitcom ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'', in Season 1 Episode 9,<ref>{{cite web |
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| url = http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cooper-Hofstadter_Polarization |
| url = http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cooper-Hofstadter_Polarization |
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| title = Entry of Season 1, Episode 9 in "the Big Bang Theory" wiki |
| title = Entry of Season 1, Episode 9 in "the Big Bang Theory" wiki |
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| accessdate = 2012-07-16 |
| accessdate = 2012-07-16 |
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| year = 2012 |
| year = 2012 |
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}}</ref> |
}}</ref> [[Leonard Hofstadter]] cited this joke with slight variation (as "spherical chickens in a vacuum"). |
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*"Spherical Cow" has been chosen as the codename for the [[Fedora (operating system)|Fedora 18]] [[Linux distribution]].<ref>{{cite web |
*"Spherical Cow" has been chosen as the codename for the [[Fedora (operating system)|Fedora 18]] [[Linux distribution]].<ref>{{cite web |
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Revision as of 00:44, 18 October 2012
Spherical cow is a metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of complex real life phenomena.[1]
Jokes
The phrase comes from a joke about theoretical physicists:
- Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer "I have the solution, but it only works in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum."
It is told in many variants,[2] including a spherical horse in a vacuum, from a joke about a physicist who said he could predict the winner of any horse race to multiple decimal points - provided it was a perfectly elastic spherical horse moving through a vacuum.[3][4]
The point of the joke is that physicists will often reduce a problem to the simplest form they can imagine in order to make calculations more feasible, even though such simplification may hinder the model's application to reality.
In popular culture
- The mockumentary series Brass Eye includes a scene where the presenter, Chris Morris, talks about the unethical production of beef from spherical cows.
- In the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, in Season 1 Episode 9,[5] Leonard Hofstadter cited this joke with slight variation (as "spherical chickens in a vacuum").
- "Spherical Cow" has been chosen as the codename for the Fedora 18 Linux distribution.[6]
See also
- Approximation
- Fermi problem
- You have two cows, a template for humorous models of political and economic systems
References
- ^ Spherical Cows
- ^ Kirkman, T. W. (1996). "Spherical Cow: A Simple Model". Statistics to Use. Retrieved 2007-02-19.
{{cite web}}: External link in|work= - ^ Bill Hefley; William E. Hefley; Wendy Murphy (1 February 2008). Service science, management and engineering: education for the 21st century. Springer. p. 80. ISBN 978-0-387-76577-8. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ Mauro Birattari (15 April 2009). Tuning Metaheuristics: A Machine Learning Perspective. Springer. pp. 183–184. ISBN 978-3-642-00482-7. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
- ^ "Entry of Season 1, Episode 9 in "the Big Bang Theory" wiki". 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
- ^ "Fedora 18 Is Codenamed The Spherical Cow". 2012. Retrieved 2012-05-11.