12-Page Math Paper Supposedly Explains Insanely Elaborate Penis Joke

12-Page Math Paper Supposedly Explains Insanely Elaborate Penis Joke

The elaborate penis joke in the season finale of HBO's "Silicon Valley" has quickly become the stuff of legend. Now the show's creator wants you to believe it's based on legitimate math, as well.

Series creator Mike Judge on Wednesday tweeted a link to what he claimed was a Stanford research paper breaking down the math behind the joke, in which characters discuss, at length, the science of masturbating a room full of tech nerds:

But the paper, which is titled "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency," also appears to be authored by two of the show's characters, Dinesh Chugtai and Bertram Gilfoyle, suggesting this is not exactly peer-reviewed science. One of the show's actors claims it is legitimate, but then he is a comedian.

It is true that Judge got real Stanford researchers to dream up a fictional mathematical formula used in the series. And the "authors" of the fictional Stanford paper profusely thank somebody named Vinith Misra, which also happens to be the name of a PhD candidate in Stanford's electrical engineering department.

Here are all 12 pages of the the paper, complete with a graph on the final page that charts "Performance" against "Variance of girth, shaft length, and leg length":

Who says dick jokes can't be smart?

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