"The Death of Proof" was a Scientific American article not by a mathematician, but by one of SciAm's staff writers. The article discussed how popular and significant demonstrations of mathematical phenomena that used fancy computer-generated animations were becoming. (The Grateful Dead was using them as their live performance light show.) He predicted that these spiffy math cartoons would soon completely extinct old-fashioned and tedious mathematical proofs.
I'd been trying for years to get Scientific American to print one of my highly scientific scholarly perfectly spelled hi-class uptown serious Letters to the Editor.
So here's the one they finally printed.
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Scientific American
(magazine USA, founded 1845)
January 1994
Hey, man, thanks a lot for "The Death of Proof." What my buddies down the hall liked best was what you said about how us students don't relate to proofs. We don't. They're real hard, and I don't think we should have to do them, not when you can get the same stuff from those neat color videos. The Grateful Dead likes them too!
If you guys keep writing neat stories like this about how math is getting easier and so much cooler, maybe us guys will take some more math courses and maybe even become real mathematicians, 'cause it looks like a real neat job now and not boring like I always thought because of all those numbers and equations and stuff.
Beavis and Butt-head say hi.
Bob Merkin
Northampton, Mass.
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