MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Pröfung läuft: Eine Erzählung in n Testabschnitten (2018)
Dietmar Dath
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This short story which appeared in the January 2018 issue of the German magazine Konkret is more about politics/economics than math, but it features frequent high level discussions of mathematical logic and probability.

In regards to logic, the question of whether the difference between capitalism and socialism is essentially a matter of the selection of alternative axioms is addressed using the terminology of model theory. Much is made of the differing interpretations of Kolmogorov in which events have a fixed probability and the more modern Bayesian approach in which probabilities are constantly varying quantities representing our knowledge (or lack of it).

The story was difficult for me to understand, and that may not only be because I was reading a garbled automatic translation of an OCR'ed scan. The subtitle translates to something like "A narrative in n test sections". It seems to be a story about a test to determine how socialist someone is...or perhaps the story is itself such a test.

Thanks to Hauke Reddmann for sending it my way!

More information about this work can be found at konkret-magazin.de.
(Note: This is just one work of mathematical fiction from the list. To see the entire list or to see more works of mathematical fiction, return to the Homepage.)

Works Similar to Pröfung läuft: Eine Erzählung in n Testabschnitten
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. Über die Schrift hinaus by Ulla Berkéwicz
  2. The Mathematics of Friedrich Gauss by D.W. Wilson
  3. Stay Close, Little Ghost by Oliver Serang
  4. Diary of a Bad Year by John Maxwell Coetzee
  5. Nagel im Himmel by Patrick Hofmann
  6. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  7. My Heart Belongs to Bertie by Helen DeWitt
  8. Coincidence by J.W. Ironmonger
  9. In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman
  10. The City of Devi by Manil Suri
Ratings for Pröfung läuft: Eine Erzählung in n Testabschnitten:
RatingsHave you seen/read this work of mathematical fiction? Then click here to enter your own votes on its mathematical content and literary quality or send me comments to post on this Webpage.
Mathematical Content:
2/5 (1 votes)
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Literary Quality:
2/5 (1 votes)
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Categories:
Genre
Motif
TopicLogic/Set Theory, Probability/Statistics,
MediumShort Stories,

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Exciting News: The 1,600th entry was recently added to this database of mathematical fiction! Also, for those of you interested in non-fictional math books let me (shamelessly) plug the recent release of the second edition of my soliton theory textbook.

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)