Re: Final Overtaking Statistics - #17 - Interlagos (Correction)

"brafield@xxxxxxxxxxx" <brafield@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Nov 4, 3:00 am, "Brian Lawrence" <Brian_W_LawrenceREMT...@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
A few errors crept in to the final report:

+++ Brian, you scare us.
Are you like good old Srinivasa Ramanujan? (You see, mathematicians
are willing to speak to me, at least ---)
The famous legend is that in the 1920's, Cambridge prof G.H. Hardy
paid a sick-room visit to the Indian genius Ramanujan who was
seriously ill in his unheated bedsitter. Hardy had caught a cab, and
like a typical math man, had noted its number. On entering the room,
Hardy said "I took a cab but its number was not very interesting:
1729."

Ramanujan sat up in bed and replied "On the contrary, that is a most
interesting number. It is the lowest number which can be expressed as
the sum of two different cubes in two different ways.:"

And it is.

Only if you restrict yourself to positive integers.

It's also a Carmichael number (the third such). For every prime p
dividing 1729, 1729 is 1 modulo (p-1). This makes 1729 behave
like a prime from the viewpoint of Fermat's little Theorem.

Hardy _should_ have known both properties. One might hypothesise
that he deliberately raised the number thinking that such
stimulation would be of some benefit to the young fellow.

Phil
--
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
-- Microsoft voice recognition live demonstration
.

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