Two technical notes ("email trolling"): Your mail claims Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-7" but then you use the UTF-8 code for "Pi": Char: π (960, #o1700, #x3c0, file ...) point=1485 of 1704 (87%) column=34 This renders the character either corrupted or "invisible" (happens for me (mutt)) in MUAs that behave correctly. Further you use Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 This means the content is just one big lump of a hex string in the mail-box, making grep useless. I suggest to use Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit cheers, jj * Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> [May 25. 2012 20:22]:
On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 9:26 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
Long before XKCD named it, I was a big fan of teacher-trolling-by-proxy. All you need is an bright evil kid who can feign a look of innocent bewilderment. E.g., for algebra, "x^4+4 doesn't factor, does it?" Geometry: "How long are the two equal chords that trisect the area of the unit disk?" Or, "To construct the tangent to a circle at a given point, why are you showing us this complicated compass procedure with perpendicular bisectors, etc., when all you need is to add four more points at random, join all five in a star, draw two more lines, and you're done, no compass needed?" (See http://www.tweedledum.com/rwg/tan.htm .) Calculus: Which convergence test should I use for sum (csc n)/n^2 ?
[...] Here's a nice one from Neil: Gee, if the area of a sphere is d/dr of 4/3 π r^3 = 4 π r^2, then the area of a cube must be d/ds of s^3 = 3 s^2 ! This should take care of all sorts of polyhedra! --rwg Why don't you say sphere area = π d^2? Are you secretly one of those τ people?
math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun