Here's an
April Fool's Day paper on the arXiv. The title of the paper is:
A Neural Networks Approach to Predicting How Things Might Have Turned Out Had I Mustered the Nerve to Ask Barry Cottonfield to the Junior Prom Back in 1997
(The arXiv doesn't have 1 April as a mailing day this year, so we get it early.)
The last sentence of the abstract is amusing: "Over-training is also discussed, although the linear algebra teacher assures us that in Barry’s case this is not possible."
As things catch my eye, I will post links to more April Fool's Day shenanigans.
Here are
various past posts related to April Fool's Day (and a couple of other posts that show up in the search but aren't particularly related).
Update: Here is
another joke arXiv paper. It is called:
Schrodinger's Cat and World History: The Many Worlds Interpretation of Alternative Facts
Update: This article seems to purposely be dated April 1st, but it has a rather different flavor from the other two.
Update: According to an April 1st article in
The Guardian, former British chancellor (more formally, "Chancellor of the Exchequer") George Osborne
has become a fashion designer. (Tip of the cap to Dominic Vella.)
Update (4/01/17) Here is a screenshot of
my April Fool's Day prank of 2006, for which I was able to convince a member of Caltech's public-relations department to post my article (actual fake news, which of course is an April 1st tradition) on the Caltech web page and include a link to it in an e-mail circular.
Update (4/01/17): Cherwell, a student publication from University of Oxford,
published an interesting story about possible cancellation of the Cancer Research UK Boat Races. Here is
another one from
Cherwell.
Update (4/01/17): There's also the matter of the
Spaced X rocket launch out of Santa Monica, California. (Tip of the cap to Andrea Bertozzi.)
Update (4/01/17): In other news, an ancient particle accelerator was
discovered on Mars. (Tip of the cap to Jean Bellissard.)
Update (4/01/17): George Takei
played an amusing prank.
Update (4/01/17): Also, the American Physical Society is launching a new journal called
Physical Review Tweets. Awesome!
Update (4/02/17): Google remixed an old (but awesome) prank by letting people
play Ms. Pac-Man on Google Maps. (Tip of the cap to Myah Evers.) Google also played
a few other pranks.
Update (4/02/17): And here are
various other pranks that you may have encountered yesterday.
Update (4/08/17): Well, the Reddit prank appears to have resulted in a rather interesting
example of self-organization (and of astounding art, with some "This is why we can't have nice things." thrown in). (Tip of the cap to Kevin Hickerson, Maria Satterwhite, and others.)
