Well, as others have done so, I'll add my 2c. We're probably all aware that there are peole who are concinced that they have solved one or more unsolved problems in mathematics. An exact value for pi, or e, a method for squaring the circle, bisecting a cube or similar. Many mathematicians, especially high profile ones, tend to receive letters like this on a regular basis. It's hard to follow the mathematics, which rambles and does not form a cohesive proof or even line of argument. I would guess that many of the members of this list know what I'm talking about. After a while, most people will leave letters like this unanswered , which unfortunately adds to the authors' paranoia. It's been a while since the GIMPS list had any of this, though this is by no means the first. Long-timers will recommend the person who insisted that there were only 37 Mersenne primes, so that a search for M38 was futile. Or was it 36 and that M37 couldn't exist? Can't remember, doesn't matter. I was embroiled in this because of the other issue as to whether the number of M primes is finite or infinite. As for pi, my favourite piece of snake-oil was the claim that rather than 3 1/7 as an approximation, pi was definitely exactly 3 1/8, which is 25/8. What could possibly be more beautiful than 5^2 / 2^3 ? Don't contact me about this. I'm happier with 355/113 myself, though it's a dog to work with.
Regards, Ian -- Ian W Halliday, BA Hons, AAIBF Snr, ATMS, CL +64 27 245 6089 (GMT+12) http://baptism.co.nz ; http://ringbark.livejournal.com Word documents not accepted -- see http://baptism.co.nz/word.html ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: 25 July 2004 17:23 Subject: Re: [Prime] Major discovery: Pi (3,1416) exact equation revealed !! Major im... > The fact that he can't even get the first five digits of Pi right in his > subject line... leads me to have serious questions to the rest of this "work"... > of course, I can't read a word of French, either... _______________________________________________ Prime mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hogranch.com/mailman/listinfo/prime
