I first started working on the OEIS back in 1997 (My earliest contributions were in the A02xxxx range). I'm pretty sure I knew about the identity at that time, and I guess this clinches it. But still, it came from an email signature in a Usenet group, so perhaps we could find the originator in the Usenet archives, if there is such a thing. On 4/28/2012 11:24 AM, Robert Munafo wrote:
David, you must have told Eric Weisstein about it at least as early as 1998.
I just checked my copy of "The CRC concise encyclopedia of mathematics", dated 1998 (CRC Press, ix + 1969 pages, LC number 98-22385). It includes the near-identity and credits "D. Wilson". It is on page 33, right column, equation (7) near the bottom.
On 2012-04-28, David Wilson<davidwwilson@comcast.net> wrote:
This reference probably predates my discovery of the near-identity, however, I seem to think I knew about it in early 2002 when I lost my job at Cabletron. Whereas I know I didn't author it myself, so I'm slightly uncomfortable with the MathWorld credit if an earlier source can be uncovered.
Back when Eric was highly involved in MathWorld, it was easy for me to make changes to it, now the process seems rather daunting.
Sort of like Wikipedia, the last three significant updates I made to Wikipedia were eventually reverted by self-proclaimed keepers of the articles at hand, so I gave up on contributing to Wikipedia. "The encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is technically true, with the understanding that anything you contribute will ultimately be removed.
On 4/27/2012 8:21 PM, Robert Munafo wrote:
On 2012-04-27, David Wilson<davidwwilson@comcast.net> wrote:
Yes, and then there was
pi^4 + pi^5 = e^6
which was found by me, however, I found it long ago in an email signature on a USENET group.
I was impressed, and later mentioned it to Eric Weisstein, and it ended up in MathWorld (Almost Integer) crediting me.
From there it went to Wikipedia (Mathematical Coincidence).
Does it have a prior history in the literature? My entry on the number has a footnote giving this page:
http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki/CoincidentalTaxonomy
which (after the article but before the comment section) says "TopicScience - Datetag20011019", suggesting a date of Oct 19, 2001.