Intentional math errors in David Foster Wallace's work (2009)

Summary

Dubious Math in Infinite Jest by Mike StrongLet me say, first of all, that I am a huge fan of David Foster Wallace in general and Infinite Jest in particular. On my first reading of IJ, I noticed a few mathematical errors but thought little of them. After reading the essay Derivative Sport in Torndao Alley in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, though, I became curious about why a writer with a clear aptitude for math would include such mistakes in his opus. Therefore, during my second reading of IJ, I made a note of the errors that I noticed. As it turned out, their number was smaller than I had imagined. Consequently, I lost interest in this topic until reading DFW's review of a pair of mathematical novels in a scientific journal. The broad knowledge of math demonstrated by DFW in this article rekindled my curiousity about the errors in IJ, and I decided to document them, in case others might be interested. My list is actually quite short - only four mistakes, two of which might well be typographical - and I offer no theories about why they appear. One of the errors is attributable to the omniscient narrator, while the other three are spoken by Mike Pemulis. Both, we can assume, are competent mathematicians.Before I outline the errors, I must make a logistical note. Because I am writing this using a simple text editor, I am somewhat symbolically challenged. Exponentiation will be denoted using a caret (e.g., 2^3 = 8). Also, I will not even attempt to depict an integral sign or the usual mathematical symbol for combinations, a pair of elongated parenthesis. I hope this makes the explanations no less understandable.The first, and perhaps the most interesting error that I noted, appears on page 259 of IJ. The narrator states that the odds of a 108 game tennis match ending in a 54-match-all tie are 1 in 2^27. This is incorrect by about seven orders of magnitude; in fact, such an outcome is much more likely than the narrator suggests. The problem of determining...