An aspiring and very talented mathematician, my lifetime goal is to solve the Riemann Hypothesis, a very famous and important unsolved problem in the subject of mathematics.

(The Clay Mathematics Institute has offered a prize of $1,000,000 to the person who provides the first correct solution to the Riemann Hypothesis)

But for right now, I am going to use math to prove something of much lesser importance than the Riemann Hypothesis. Today, I am use math to prove that there are millions of people in the United States who believe that Kansas should have been ranked No. 1.

By the way, I am probably not going to be awarded any prize money for proving this. However, I could really care less about that. In fact, I'm just going to go ahead, and start my proof.

Problem:

Are there at least two million people in the United States, who believe that the Kansas Jayhawks should have been ranked No. 1?

The following 3 statements are facts:

1. 60 of 60 coaches did NOT place Kansas No. 1 in the Final USA Today Coaches Poll.

2. 64 of 65 AP voters did NOT place Kansas No. 1 in the Final Associated Press (AP) Poll.

3. The population of the United States is about 300 million (300,000,000) people.

My Conjecture:

Given these 3 facts, I can prove that there are millions of people in the United States who believe that Kansas should have been ranked No. 1.

PROOF:

1. As stated in the FACTS above, 60 out of 60 coaches, and 64 out of 65 AP voters did NOT place Kansas No. 1 in the Final Polls.

2. By adding these numbers up, 124 out of 125 voters did NOT place Kansas No. 1 in the Final Polls.

3. However, by taking the complement of the statement, "124 out of 125 voters did NOT place Kansas No. 1 in the Final Polls," that statement is equivalent to saying this statement: "one out of 125 voters DID place Kansas in the Final Polls."

4. Now, by converting "one out of 125" into decimal form, one out of 125 = .008 (or eight-tenths of 1 percent).

5. As stated in the FACTS above, the population of the United States is about 300 million (300,000,000) people.

6. Now, use the assumption that about one out of EVERY 125 people would place Kansas No. 1 in the Final Polls (provided by the sample of the 60 coaches and the 65 AP voters).

7. Therefore, the number of people in the United States who believe that Kansas SHOULD have been ranked No. 1 is about:

300,000,000 * .008 = 2,400,000 (or 2.4 million)

Conclusion:

I have just proven that my conjecture was true, as there are about 2.4 million (2,400,000) people in the United States who believe that Kansas should have been ranked No. 1.

Q. E. D.

[Author's NOTE: I originally provided a PROOF of this when I was responding to a comment made on my article "BCS Championship: Why Kansas Should Be In, LSU Should Be Out" on Saturday, May 31, 2008. In fact, I was so impressed by my proof that I decided to make an article out of it.]