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Classic Math Puzzle Cracked
An anonymous reader writes "This is cool - if mind-bending. A century ago, a self-taught math genius from India noticed some patterns in how numbers can be created by adding other numbers. Now a grad student has finished the job showing that the patterns apply to all prime numbers, not just some. There's more on the Indian math guy here."
Let's not use real names or give any credit to some guy.
The Indian mathematician outsourced this to a US grad student
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
a self-taught math genius from India noticed some patterns in how numbers can be created by adding other numbers.
yeah, I saw that too. Like, how if you have a 4, and add a 1, you get a 5. It's pretty cool.
"We would not have expected that the crank would have been the right answer to so many of these congruence theorems"
ah crank.. is there anything it cant do?
"Na-hee, na-na-jar. Na-hee-na-na-jar.
It's not that difficult."
"Yeah, well at least your name isn't Michael Bolton."
That German physics guy was in the news today, too. Interesting that they both came up with their ideas while working as a clerk. Maybe Dante and Randal will eventually lick cold fusion or something.
... if you'd posted anonymously.
Infuriate left and right
Hate to reply to my own reply to my own reply to my own reply, but sorry for not mentioning how pretty rainbows are in the reply!
"how numbers can be created by adding other numbers"... that sounds more like the observation of an American presidency guy.
Does this mean I've been wasting my CPU cycles?
I am a self taught web surfer from Indiana. I like puzzles and I like the way the editor drew me into the article by allowing me to discern the genius's name by noticing a pattern in the name of the embedded url. Just like Sesame Street's "One of these things is not like the others" game, audience participation turned this article from a whoa :( to a wow :D. I give it two hearty thumbs up!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Not necessarily. He might just be an idiot.
hard core geek-ware
This reminds me of that movie, you know? The one about that guy that did stuff?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
"A decade ago, a self-taught computer genius from Finland [...] There's more on the Finish computer guy here."
(I think you get the point)
I'm surprised we got as much detail! Should be something like "Some smart guy from a long time ago did some smart things, and now some other smart guy made them better..." Duuuuuh, that's what *I* got my degree for!
I would like to encrypt my credit card information for sending it over the Internet. Can someone *please* help me use this article to do that? I mean, where do I plug in the credit card number? Does it matter that mine doesn't end in "4" or "9"? Do I need the CCV?
Not only that, but in other news:
MSFT has just submitted a software patent on
adding numbers together, based upon this f(n).
The number 7(TM) has been brought to you by MSFT.
Seriously, the dude at 7-11 totally fucked up my change last time I bought a Slurpee.
"Ramanujan had always lived in a tropical climate and had his mother (later his wife) to cook for him: now he faced the English winter, and he had to do all his own cooking to adhere to his caste's strict dietary rules." Wow.. I really think they could have worded that better.
I think he should be called a "Native American", or more specifically, his tribe, cherokee, apache, or iroquis.
But Indian? Welcome to 1875, Mr. Racist.
But when your number's up...
Ludwig Wittgenstein
"I find your lack of faith disturbing."
"Never underestimate the power of the [fans]."
Elvis is a good example of the strange things people will do for a dead guy. (Except, he's not really dead, right?)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I heard Iceland just granted citizenship to some American chess player or something. He's also suing the U.S. for some reason.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
Long live Finlandia!
But if we use negative integers, 1729 gets trumped by 0, since x^3 + (-x)^3 = 0 for all integers.
As a math graduate student student I was invited to watch the presentations of the people applying for a graduate faculty position at the university. I was only able to make it to one of the presentations, but it was an unforgetable experience for me.
The applicant gave a very interesting presentation. I got lost during the first 5 minutes when he was still giving background, but it was still interesting. His presentation was on - assuming that I remember any of the very little that I may have understood - some specific behaviors of the infinite boundaries of n-dimensional manifolds.
The best part was when he said, "In case you think that this is just esoteric and 'out there,' I want you to know that this stuff has real applications in topology."
There were about 6 other grad students and 15 math faculty there and I think I was the only one to notice how funny that was, so I'm sorry if you don't get the joke.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
If they can catch the dupes, mispellings, and other obvious errors, I'm all for outsourcing slashdot.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
You are oh so wrong! I have developed an algorithm that will compress any file to an arbitrarily small size! There are still a few problems with accuracy, but it really works, given enough time.
an American being a world-class cricket player
...wheeeeeeze...
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha!!!!
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha!!!
stop it - you're killing me...
I'd really *really* like to see that, as it would complete my view that reality is just one great big acid trip.
I get your point, but thats fucking hilarious.
Call the Grecians!!!
it said "the world needs another quantum mechanics textbook the way it needs another table of known integers". probably the best joke i've read doing physics homework at 4 in the morning.
Obilgatory story (Score:5, Interesting)
by uniqueCondition (769252) on Tuesday March 22, @07:45PM (#12018209)
GH Hardy (he wrote A Mathematician's Apology) speaking of Ramanujan:
I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
(London 1940).
A funny co-incidence happened about 10 years ago that brought this story to mind when I moved back from A2 to Detroit. Our new phone number ended in 1729. Of course my GF complained that it would be hard to remember since it was such an un-interesting phone number!
By an amazing coincidence, Bill Gates is the Start (menu) guy!
All the nerds with jobs will be there, those in the US will be burger flippers (*) or on the street, and Slashdot's future audience will be over in India.
This will in turn reduce productivity in India so much that America becomes competitive again! Brilliant!
sudo ergo sum
Bose, anyone?
No, I prefer Bang & Olufsen. But thanks for the offer.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
"I'm also surprised that the Slashdot editors let this story be published without correcting it!! What, are story submissions now governed by a perl script?"
Unlikely.
I, for one, have considerable confidence that a fairly simple perl script could at least competently produce basic English spelling and grammar.