The curve is what we nowadays call a Lorentzian, which doesn’t have a cute story to go with it.
25 years ago I made up a sweatshirt with the curve on it, subtly altered to look like the “stickmen” in the movie The Blair Witch Project, and labeled it The Witch of Agnesi Project in lettering just like that on the poster.
I wore that sweatshirt to MIT and to science fiction conventions, and garnered not one commentor indication that anybody had gotten the joke.
