Professor Moriarty, the evil mathematician best known as the arch enemy of Sherlock Holmes, is both the hero and the narrator of this short story. He joins forces with Dracula and uses math to fight Jack the Ripper.
Spoiler Alert: The idea of the story is that Sherlock Holmes has gone crazy and is Jack the Ripper. The main mathematical content is in Moriarty's proofs based on game theory that Holmes will get less cautious as he gets closer to being caught for the crimes.
I have not actually read this story, which appears only in German in the mathematically-themed collection Mathematische Seitensprönge: Ein unbeschwerter Ausflug in das Wunderland zwischen Mathematik und Literatur by Alexander Mehlmann, an Austrian professor of business math. So, I am very grateful to Hauke Reddmann for bringing it to my attention, rating it, and summarizing it for me.
|