Definition:Parker Square/Historical Note

Historical Note on Parker Square

The Parker square was discovered by Matt Parker in $2016$ when he was exploring to see how close it was possible to get to a magic square using all square numbers.

Note that it had already been proved that such a magic square would contain elements that are all over $10^{14}$.

The exercise here was nothing more than just having a go and seeing what would happen.

Unfortunately, to Matt Parker's chagrin, this attempt was videoed, named and became a widespread internet meme.

Parker is working as hard as he can to convert the Parker square into (in his words):

a mascot of the importance of giving something a go, even when you're likely to fail.

Sources

• 2019: Matt Parker: Humble Pi: So, what have we learned from our mistakes?