motivational lesson demonstrating the power of positive thinking. Over time, some facts were altered, but the basic story persisted in the form of an urban legend and as an introductory scene in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting.

Dantzig recalled in a 1986 interview in the College Mathematics Journal, "A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, Splawa-Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap