In a sudden revelation, a serendipitous brainchild of fate, a disciplinary intersection of theory and application, what will henceforth be known as “the tossup that shook the world,” longtime IHS teacher Benjamin Kirk proved the Riemann Hypothesis on April 1. According to witnesses, Kirk was in the middle of grading tests for his AP Statistics class when the event occurred.
“He looked like he was in a bad mood at first,” said Kirk’s student Benjamin Salomon ’17. “He was scribbling all over my test, something like ‘it’s been eight months and you still aren’t writing TMP,’ but then suddenly he stood up and tore the test to pieces, shouting ‘Eureka!’ All I can say is, thank god I’m not getting that test back.” IHS Bibliographer Benjamin Eckley corroborated his account. “Yeah, Ben was grading Ben’s test, so I shot him a quick text, like, ‘Hey Ben, how’s Ben doing,’ right. And Ben replies to me, saying ‘Well, Ben, I expected better from Ben.’ You know, Ben’s been bent up beneath the weather, he’s a bit of a has-been right now. So I dropped by to check up on Ben—and that’s when it happened.”
Kirk has been shortlisted for the Fields Medal, the Nebula Award, the Galaxy Award, the Universe Award, the Many-Worlds-Multidimensional-Hyperspace Award, the Benjamin Cooper Award, the Benjamin Button Award, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Board of Education Commendation Ceremony, and of course, free smoothies from none other than Superintendent Brown. In honor of the event, Brown has designated April 1 inter-districtal smoothie day. “In this district, we reward excellence, and Ben Kirk’s contribution to our technological future is more than deserving of my special blend,” he tweeted. Experts believe Brown’s smoothies to hold the secret to his massive physique and insatiable lust for technology and shiny things, which will presumably be passed down to his spiritual successor in Kirk.
We caught up with Kirk to interview him directly about his earthshaking development.
Quintin Edgard Cauchy-Schwarz Hôpital de la Denis ’17: Congratulations on your discovery.
Benjamin Kirk: Thank you. I couldn’t believe it at first. I had to be absolutely sure it was correct, so I made a 1-proportion z-interval, then a 1-proportion t-interval, then a 2-proportion t-interval. I even made a 5-proportion Poisson interval. But the math checks out.
QED: So, what’s the basic structure of your proof?
BK: It’s quite simple, really. It revolves around using the stochastic resonance of gamma waves to simulate a simply connected Ricci flow, allowing us to assume an infinite Hausdorff dimension for the Hilbert Curve. That is, the asymptotic line can be measured topographically with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
QED: Oh. That makes sense.
BK: Doesn’t it? Actually, I owe it all to Ben and Ben. If Ben and Ben hadn’t been there to provide me the inspiration, I never would have been able to come up with the idea.
QED: Between Casey Wetherbee ’17 qualifying for the USAMO, Dr. Brown’s revolutionary technological initiatives, and your discovery, ICSD is quite the hotbed of STEM progress right now. Where do you see things going from here?
BK: Last year, The Tattler reported zero newsworthy STEM events from ICSD, but today alone, we have three. If you make a regression plot with that data, and turn your calculator upside-down, and maybe drink a few beers, you have an exponential growth model with R-squared value 1. And you don’t have to be a statistician to know what that means. Well, I guess you do. But either way, according to my data, I suspect The Tattler will soon be churning out issues as long as Webster’s Dictionary to keep up with ICSD’s pace of technological advancement.
