English

Fitting an Elephant with Four non-Zero Parameters

History and Overview 2024-07-12 v1

Abstract

In 1953, Enrico Fermi criticized Dyson's model by quoting Johnny von Neumann: "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." So far, there have been several attempts to fit an elephant using four parameters, but as the problem has not been well-defined, the current methods do not completely satisfy the requirements. This paper defines the problem and presents an attempt.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.07909,
  title  = {Fitting an Elephant with Four non-Zero Parameters},
  author = {Dian Jin and Junze Yuan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.07909},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:36:09.772Z