Thursday 28 September 2017

How to fit an elephant (1953)


A superb story HERE by Freeman Dyson about how a meeting with Enrico Fermi changed his career. At the heart of the story, Fermi quotes John von Neumann, who famously said:

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

An example of how to actually do this, with Python code is HERE.