Re: [asa] mistake and slide rule

There's an even better joke that was perpetrated by Martin Gardner in the
April edition of his mathematical games section of Scientific American
once. He claimed that someone had proved that e^(pi.sqrt(163)) was an
integer. The point being that it is very close to an integer (within 10^-12
of quite a large integer). It is known as Ramanujan's number, and there is
actually a quite sensible reason why it's close to an integer. Nice idea
for April fool to claim it actually _was_ an integer.

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:14 AM, Don Nield <d.nield@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

> The joke is that a well taught college Mathematics student would recognize
> immediately that e^pi-pi could not possibly be an integer. The
> mathematicians are having a joke at the expense of the computer programmers!
> Don
>
>
>
> Collin Brendemuehl wrote:
>
>> There seems to be a mathematics joke here that I just don't get.
>> But my bother-in-law, Ron, teaches college math.
>> Perhaps he will see the humor.
>>
>> Or can someone just explain it?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Iain Strachan [mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com]
>> Sent: Monday, June 9, 2008 11:32 AM
>> To: 'Alexanian, Moorad'
>> Cc: 'George Cooper', asa@calvin.edu
>> Subject: Re: [asa] mistake and slide rule
>>
>> A good test of the accuracy of early calculators is to compute e^pi - pi.
>> It should come out as 20. If it comes out as 19.999... you probably have a
>> poor floating point handler in the calculator.... :-)
>>
>> See the cartoon on my blogsite:
>>
>> http://iainstrachan.blogspot.com/2008/05/geek-joke.html
>>
>>
>>
>
>

-- 
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