"Bob" <bob@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:1157500223.919402.141030@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> eleaticus wrote:
> > >
> > > I have found a beautiful bidding system but this margin is too small
to
> > > contain it.
> >
> > I don't understand that one.
>
> It's a reference to Fermat's Last Theorem. From Wikipedia:
OHH! Yes. I should of got that one.
Thanks
--
eleaticus
ee-lee-AT-i-cus
eleaticus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> 'Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes abbreviated as FLT) is one of the
> most famous theorems in the history of mathematics. It states that:
>
> It is impossible to separate any power higher than the second into two
> like powers,
> or, using more formal mathematical notation:
>
> If an integer n is greater than 2, then an + bn = cn has no solutions
> in non-zero integers a, b, and c.
>
> The 17th-century mathematician Pierre de Fermat wrote in 1637 in his
> copy of Claude-Gaspar Bachet's translation of the famous Arithmetica of
> Diophantus: "I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which
> this margin is too narrow to contain." '
>
> It turns out that Fermat was correct, but probably did actually have a
> proof. It took mathematicians over 350 years to finally prove it in
> the 1990's.
>
> Wikipedia included some odd facts about FLT, including this:
>
> 'A sum, proved impossible by the theorem, appears in an episode of The
> Simpsons, "Treehouse of Horror VI". In the three-dimensional world in
> "Homer3", the equation 1782 ^ 2 + 1841 ^ 2 = 1922 ^ 2 is visible, just
> as the dimension begins to collapse.'
>
> - Bob T.
>
|
