President Carter Says Mathematicians Should Allow Square Pegs To Fit In Round Holes

WASHINGTON––In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, former President Jimmy Carter talked about his letter to mathematicians. In it, Carter called on leading mathematicians to support efforts to fit square pegs in round holes.

“I asked them to join with me in doing some of these things to prevent inequality, and to prevent segregation between figures, and to prevent unnecessary discrimination between different types of shapes, and to prevent things of that kind,” Carter said.

The former president went on to say that there was a movement towards equality in the geometric community, but that mathematicians had done much to support discrimination by ‘ordaining’ that squares were not equal to circles:

“This has been done and still is done by the mathematic community ever since the dawn of geometry, when mathematicians ordained that a circle cannot fit into a square, for instance, but another square can. A circle can fit into a circle, but it can’t fit into a square. This is wrong, I think.”

The geometric community has come out in defense of only squares fitting into square holes saying that the former president “grossly misunderstands” geometry.

“Carter’s comments about the role of squares shows a gross misunderstanding of geometry,” a spokesman for the mathematic community Ashley Thompson told EOTT this morning. “As math teachers across the globe continue to remind us, a square is a plane figure with four equal straight sides and four right angles. They have a very important role in geometry. But their role is not to be a circle or even to attempt to fit into a circle.”