
Mathematicians find 'magic key' to drive Ramanujan's taxi-cab number - ghosh
http://esciencecommons.blogspot.ca/2015/10/mathematicians-find-magic-key-to-drive.html
======
crystalmeph
Ramanujan was a genius, but he didn't just factor 1729 on the spot in the
hospital bed. According to Wikipedia, he'd already known about it a few years
before, so it was just coincidence that Hardy happened to present a number he
already knew about, although to be honest, he probably knew interesting facts
about most numbers below 1 million or so.

~~~
justifier
when you think about these sorts of things you come across many interesting
numbers that posit unique problems to your theories

when you are looking to develop a theory you can sometimes look to markers for
guidance

markers like: first, smallest, largest known, outliers;

ramanujan's language:

    
    
        the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes
        in two different ways.
    

certainly implies he once asked himself.. what is the smallest number i can
express as the sum of two cubes in only two different ways

and its place as the smallest, with postive cubes, means it is elementary and
essential to a number of extended applications that use products,cubes and
sums

i wish the story went on to have ramanujan explain what he was seeking to
uncover by examining which number could be the smallest expressible as the sum
of two cubes in two different ways..

to what end was he using the two different ways, controlled in their only
being two, to examine properties of sums of cubes

------
osullivj
Whenever I need an arbitrary const int I use 1729. I've left a trail of 1729s
in the codebases I've touched over the years, and I like the thought of other
hackers recognising the number when they have to fix the bugs I've left
behind.

~~~
elbrownos
Can I borrow your debit card for a minute?

~~~
osullivj
LOL! No - 1729 is not my PIN ;)

~~~
liotier
Well... You have just been tricked into reducing the guessing space by 1/10000
!

~~~
chki
or has he...? (SCNR)

------
chx
Ramanujan was an extraordinary mathematician who was able to intuit (and then
prove) many really surprising formulas. I have no idea how a movie is going to
work since most of these results are far too heavy for a movie screen and
without it how can you understand the man ?

~~~
coliveira
Ramanujan had such an extraordinary life that you don't even need to tell
anything about mathematics to make it interesting.

------
Tinyyy
So, what’s the deal with K3 surfaces?

~~~
elcct
They are improved K2 surfaces with less glare and more hype

------
dang
Url changed from [http://phys.org/news/2015-10-mathematicians-magic-key-
ramanu...](http://phys.org/news/2015-10-mathematicians-magic-key-ramanujan-
taxi-cab.html), which copies this without linking to it.

~~~
sohkamyung
Out of curiosity, how did you know that the original URL copied the article
from the current URL?

~~~
shripadk
Just look at the other articles on that blog. Google the title and you'll know
that he is copying from various reputed science news websites and journals.
For example "Fungi at root of plant drugs that can help, or harm, sick monarch
butterflies" is an article published in this blog as well as
[http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/ehs-
far100815...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/ehs-
far100815.php) . Unless the author of the blog can prove that he is a central
source of information for all these sites, there is no doubt that he is
blatantly plagiarizing.

~~~
psykovsky
I think you should read their About page[0]... they are partners of Emory
University. Or so they say[1]...

[0] [http://phys.org/help/about-us/](http://phys.org/help/about-us/) [1]
[http://phys.org/partners/emory-university/](http://phys.org/partners/emory-
university/)

