Slashdot Mirror


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."

1 of 555 comments (clear)

  1. Obilgatory story by uniqueCondition · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

    --
    "The more you know, the less sure you are." - Voltaire