Re: Human calculation record - but why does he bother?

Philip wrote:
"Peter H.M.Brooks" <peter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7ZudnabRa5NpaPzanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx
Philip wrote:

Your arithmetic seems a bit off. I think you should be looking at 16
digit numbers ranging from a little over 2e15 to something under 2.5e15.

Yes, you're right, it's in the order of 10^15, because 15 is ~200/13.

Arithmetic was never my strong point!

If you hadn't noticed that 10^n has n+1 digits rather than n, that's more of
a problem with counting than arithmetic. But see what happened here:
>
Counting is part of arithmetic.

20000000000000 -> 8192... (but 203 digits, so too big)

It looks as if you had forgotten that the result of your initial division was approximate and were reasoning as if it had been exact.
>
Well, no, I don't think so. The problem that the human calculator was working on, as I made it clear that I understood it, was to calculate integral thirteenth roots of a 200 digit number. Consequently any number raised to the thirteenth power that had more or less than 200 digits didn't count, not being a solution candidate. This is unconnected with thirteen not being a factor of 200.
>
> It's easier to
gloss over this sort of thing when considering matters in qualitative terms. That arithmetic makes such mistakes harder to get away with is, in my view, a point in its favour.

Yes, it is a point in arithmetic's favour, I agree. Actually, it's a point in favour of mathematics generally that answers are either right or wrong.

The world is not generally as simple as that - as I've pointed out before.
.

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