Most people seem aware of their mathematical limitations, but a minority of circle-squarers, crackpots, and isolates of varying proficiency convince themselves that they are breaking new ground when in truth they are usually either retreading the beaten path or forging a new path to La La Land. I've had run-ins with Archimedes Plutonium and the Smarandache crowd and others of this sort, and my advice is not to acknowledge them. The benefits of dispossessing these people of their cherished illusions do not justify the effort. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred lunnon" <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> To: "math-fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 2:34 PM Subject: [math-fun] Letter from Grozny
I wonder if any other math-funners have been the recipients of a curious example of mathematical spam, recently deposited in my in-box with the customary ominous thud. Among other things, its covering gloss observes that the (putative) author has spent some 30 years perfecting his solution to the "problem of finding exponents of prime numbers", and invites the reader's opinion of the attached 47-page treatise on the topic. Painstaking inspection of this document eventually reveals that the "exponent" under discussion is (minus) the p-adic valuation m! [the maximum power of p dividing factorial m].
I have on reflection decided that it might be both kinder and wiser to refrain from suggesting that he consult Graham, Knuth & Patashnik's "Concrete Mathematics", which I believe quotes a theorem of Legendre from 1830 to the effect that this exponent equals (m - s_p(m))/(p - 1), where s_p(m) denotes the sum of the digits of m in base p.
But I can't help feeling that it is a great shame he could not have devoted just a few weeks of his 30 years to reading this wonderful book, from which he might just have actually learnt some beautiful and useful mathematics; instead of which, he seems frozen in a state of perpetual numerical infantilism. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing ..."