ABSTRACT
One reader of this little fairy tale complained that I was ‘‘picking on a real mathematician.’’ I hope readers do not mistake my fictitious Sam Schwartz for Hermann Amandus Schwartz (1843-1921), who does have an inequality named for him. My fictional Pierre Charlier is not to be confused with Carl Wilhelm Ludwig Charlier (18621934), who was so often confused by calculations that he invented computational checks which now carry his name (a name long enough to need something to carry it). Charlier’s bank checks were, so far as I know, good as gold. Mathematician Amalie Noether passed on in 1935, and I have no reason to suppose that her mathematical soul went to a nether world. Anyway, wherever she may or may not be, I am not likely to get any letters of complaint from her, or any of the other mathematicians mentioned in this story.
