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skinkestek

This is probably written by people who don't have real-life experience with goats I guess.

I cannot even concentrate on the problem since I keep coming back to what the goat will do:

- jump the fence

- chew the rope

- probably more

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When I was a small child my parents took me to a petting zoo inside an amusement park. While an employee watched, the goat I had just fed started eating the shirt I was wearing. I was terrified. My parents, not wanting to hurt the goat looked to the employee for help. The employee said, "Yeah, they'll do that" and turned around, not concerned for me or for the goat. My parents eventually extricated my shirt and all was well. I have no idea why I was never afraid of goats (especially since I was afraid of trees for a period of about six months).

Yeah, goats will eat everything.

  Two goats chew film tape. One says:
  - This film is nice.
  - The book was better.

Are you a Scandinavian or is this joke international? (Haven't heard it in 20 years though :)

I'm from Poland. I've also heard it over 20 years ago.

In such cases, it's best to assume it's a special zero dimensional point goat, which only chews grass.

...in a vacuum.

How do you tie a zero dimensional point goat? How do you know he's in the fence at all? How does he chew the grass? Where does the grass go?

And having discovered the goat, how do you put a tether on something with no size?

You'd need a special rope to tie it as well, in addition to low-dimensional fencing and specialized grass.

Literally every one of these questions pertains to real goats, too.

... are you serious? You use an infinitely thin rope of course!

Slightly more seriously, you take the limit of a alpha-sized goat tied with an alpha-sized rope as alpha goes to zero from above.

Q: How do you tie a zero dimensional point goat? A: With a line.

Q: How do you know he's in the fence at all? A: From definition.

Q: How does he chew the grass? A: Using axioms.

Q: Where does the grass go? A: We need more grants^Wresearch to answer that.

First, imagine a spherical cow!

FTA: But in the 1960s, for mysterious reasons, goats started displacing horses in the grazing-problem literature — this despite the fact that goats, according to the mathematician Marshall Fraser, may be “too independent to submit to tethering.”

The better question is what farmer has a circular fence and is actively tying livestock to said fence. The fence should be good enough!

The original statement of the problem talks about a horse. I wonder when it changed into a goat.

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