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White and Nerdy
As You Know, some cartoon writers didn't exactly do well in school. So, it seems that, with the passing of time, all their knowledge of math was condensed into a pile of information that they know pasted on every chalkboard in school scenes or written in class notes, regardless of the knowledge necessary to understand those equations.
For example, a fourth-grade class will sometimes have "pi" written on the board, which would scare the students who should just be starting to learn about simple algebra. Other popular examples are integrals, and their well-known "large S" symbol. Very often, however, there won't be any variable of integration. Let's not forget about E=mc^2, the famous equation which has been degraded into nothing but a complex-looking decoration in everything from kids' cartoons to science shows. (E=mc^2 is actually Albert Einstein's formula for mass-energy equivalence; far more people have heard of it than have any idea of what it actually means.) And then there's the big sigma, the summation symbol. Nothing says smart like a giant sigma.
Trigonometric relations and the Pythagorean theorem are also popular. But don't ask to see words like "sine", "cosine" and "tangent".
This happens for three reasons: First, to ensure that there is some teaching going on, as the show itself thankfully never needs to show the actual classes. Second, to scare the young viewers into believing that they're going to see this stuff when they get older, even though this only happens in engineering. Third, as a way of showing someone is really smart, often combining it with Room Full Of Crazy.
Examples:
- The trope's name comes from a pastiche of E=mc^2 that appeared in a scene of Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars where Harvey (who was named after The Harvey of the movie Harvey) writes "E = MC Hammer" on a blackboard of other nonsense.
- The same exact equation was said aloud by Dina on the Nickelodeon sitcom Salute Your Shorts, during a scene intended to make fun of the "growing and learning" activities going on during her camp experience.
- Spongebob Squarepants usually has Sandy show Bob some equations.
- Fairly Oddparents has done this as well.
- Abused by Dexters Laboratory.
- Professor Utonium's lab in The Powerpuff Girls.
- Parodied on Family Guy.
- The intro to Pinky And The Brain has a scene where Brain is writing his "theory of everything" on a chalkboard, which is basically a bunch of pseudo-mathematical mumbo-jumbo, including "THX=1138".
- In an episode of Torchwood, a integral equation was used to open the rift that led Jack and Tosh into the past. It didn't seem very realistic, though at least it had integration variables.
- In the Sword Of The Galaxy book series, a simple algebraic expression can be used by the Trakkorians to enter hyperspace. When the author received complaints about this piece of Fridge Logic, he recited the MST 3 K Mantra.
- Monkey Dust has a chalkboard full of geometry in a class teaching cottaging! (For non-UK readers, that's anonymous gay sex in public bathrooms). True to the title of this trope, the board also contains "run=dmc".
- Power Rangers Dino Thunder: The blackboard in Dr. O's classroom is littered with the names of dinosaurs which appear to be chosen randomly, and not all of which actually exist (The brontosaurus makes an appearance).
- This
 xkcd strip includes an integral without a variable of integration, as part of a clearly erroneous equation -- but in this case the error is integral (sorry) to the punchline.
- A more elaborate variant appears in this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow. Instead of meaningless numerical symbols, it's an invalid proof that involves dividing by zero, perhaps to complement the scientist's fallacious reasoning.
- Parodied by (who else?) The Simpsons, when Homer is an inventor. During a montage, he's shown writing equations on a blackboard, and after he's done the camera moves to shot of the house, where there's a massive explosion. Cut back to Homer, who examines the equation and crosses out the part that involves dynamite and replaces it with something else. This results in another, bigger explosion.
- The Simpsons was fond of this one. When Homer had a bright idea, the camera would occasionally do a close-up of his head, revealing two chimpanzees in graduation gowns and mortarboards writing E=mc^2 on a chalkboard. Otherwise, the chimps would be grooming each other and eating the lice.
- And subverted in another episode: Homer puts on some nerd glasses he finds in the power plant's toilets and immediately recites what he seems to think is the Pythagorean Theorem (he's actually quoting The Wizard Of Oz movie):
Homer: The sum of the squares of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square of the remaining side.
Co-worker: That's a right triangle, moron!
Homer: D'oh!
- One segment for AMV Hell focused on a slow crawl across a blackboard covered with math equations in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Halfway through the piece, a voice calls out "WRONG!", and as the music rises in tempo, all the errors on the board are pointed out with red marker. It's right here at 03:05.
- Two Words: Mariah Carey, who went so far as to name her most recent album E=MC^2 (except with, you know, superscript 2). She claims it stands for "(E) Emancipation (=) equals (MC) Mariah Carey to the second power." Yeah right.
- The second power? OMG, there's two of her??!!
- The Doctor Who episode "The Impossible Planet" has Maxwell's equations of electric and magnetic fields as graffiti on a table in the cafeteria.
- The image at the top of this page is from Weird Al in his video White and Nerdy. Just to show how smart Alfred is. Ironically, it contains an error.
- The title card for the Angry Video Game Nerd video "Chronologically Confused" features the Nerd in front of a board filled with nonsensical equations and formulae, including at points a Triforce and a drawing of Mario.
- The first few levels of Super Paper Mario feature "joke" equations in the background, made up of random numbers and mathematical symbols combined with famous Mario icons such as the Fire Flower and mushrooms.
- There is MATH. In the SKY.
- In the pilot episode of Sliders, the main character leaves his blackboard covered in equations, not knowing what to write after the equals sign. When he comes back, his double has solved it, and the expression he has written as an infinity symbol on the denominator. That's right. He just needed to divide by infinity.
- a rather infamous example-turned-meme comes from a particular scene in Futari Wa Pretty Cure: "You should be able to solve this." Although the original scene is actually intentional, intended to give Honoka an opportunity to show off how smart she is by pointing out the error.
Exceptions:
- The opening credits of Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu feature a number of diagrams and equations, including the obligatory E=mc2 and the Drake Equation, appropriately enough (as well as plenty most people have never heard of). In "Snow Mountain Syndrome" of the later novels, though, solving an instance of Euler's planar graph formula becomes a matter of great importance, so this is to be expected. That and the guy that writes the Light Novel likes math.
- Considering that the show NUMB3RS has, well, numbers as its unique gimmick, it would be pretty insulting if this were the case.
- Futurama has quite the opposite. Several of the writers are math people, so there are math jokes in the background that laymen won't even notice, like the number 1729 (yes, that's a joke).
- A very common mockery thrown at the movie A Beautiful Mind is that in promo posters for the movie, Russell Crowe as John Nash is sitting making a thinking face behind a glass wall covered in equations. Right on his forehead is the statement "0 < pi < 1". Geeks had a lot of fun mocking the apparent total lack of understanding of math in Hollywood and coming up for ways this statement might be justified (often speculating on the shape of Russell Crowe's penis). In reality, there was a perfectly good explanation, in fact: The math consultant for the movie (who spoke at this troper's school) had been asked to help prepare the shoot for this poster by covering the glass wall with impressive-looking equations, and for "authenticity's" sake had done so using real equations from the real John Nash's papers. John Nash was a game theorist, and he had written a paper involving an imaginary game with 24 players. Since there are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, he playfully decided to name the imaginary players after Greek letters. The "0 < pi < 1" statement comes from a portion of the paper describing an imaginary situation involving placement of turn order within the game. Notice that Nash was specifically doing this in order to undermine the dogmatic insistence of certain narrow-minded mathematicians on always using the same symbols to mean the same thing, when, after all, pi is nothing more than the Greek letter "P", and for people who have familiarity with other disciplines beyond simple college-level math it can mean all kinds of things.
- Though as an economics major who specialized in game theory, the explanation of the concept of Nash equilibrium (the crowning achievement of John Nash's career which revolutionized the school of game theory) is painfully wrong.
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