It is now a proven fact:

> WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Kansas really is flatter
> than a pancake, U.S. geographers reported on Monday.
> A scientific comparison of the topography of Kansas to a
> pancake shows the state, known for its vast, even fields, is in
> fact really, really flat, geographer Mark Fonstad of Southwest
> Texas State University and colleagues found.
> "While driving across the American Midwest, it is common to
> hear travelers remark, 'This state is as flat as a pancake,'"
> they wrote in their report, published in the Annals of
> Improbable Research.
> "Simply put, our results show that Kansas is considerably
> flatter than a pancake."
> While the study, written for a humorous journal, is
> tongue-in-cheek, the researchers used serious methodology.
> "There are bigger questions that we ask even though we are
> doing this sort of thing for fun," Fonstad said in a telephone
> interview.
> "The kind of question we ask is: how do you compare two
> things that aren't the same size? We like to play games in our
> heads to try to answer these questions."
> A United States Geological Survey digital elevation model
> of Kansas provided one set of data for the comparison.
> Photographs of the pancake were translated into digital
> data and scaled to enable a comparison with Kansas. Scaling is
> the process that map makers use when they represent an entire
> state, for instance, on a single page.
> "We used a comparison called a flattening ratio," Fonstad
> said. "It is the same comparison as used for figuring out how
> spherical the Earth is."
> While Kansas has some hilly parts, on an overall average it
> is quite level, the analysis showed.

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In theory, theory and practice are the same
In practice, theory and practice are different