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In the Good Will Hunting movie there is a quote of a professor towards his students while writing a math problem on the blackboard:
"So please finish Percival for next time. "
You can watch it here:
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/c6f097d7-aad4-4f6b-9631-77fc6ee609ea
I've searched it already. But the question is. Why should a math problem resemble a knight of the Round Table in the King Arthur legend? What's the background of this?
What's the meaning of the word Percival?
What was heard was Parseval, although it is often transcribed wrongly. Marc-Antoine Parseval des Chênes (1755 – 1836) was a French mathematician whose work preceded Fourier's (the class topic involves Fourier analysis).
Parseval's Theorem is often used to demonstrate mathematics software, including Maple:
Reference is made to the scene in university mathematics courses:
