Taxable Winnings

[hoovesupsideyourhead]

Originally Posted by Dunbar

hooves, I may be an idiot, but, unfortunately, I'm not a savant. My mental math skills are nothing special.

But that does remind me of a story I like. One of the top 20th C. mathematicians was a Brit named G.H.Hardy. Hardy discovered a mental phenom from India named Ramanujan, who had what can only be described as an amazing relationship with numbers. Hardy invited Ramanujan to England, where they collaborated on a number of papers. But Ramanujan was sickly, and spent a lot of time in the hospital. On one visit, Hardy found himself running out of things to talk about, so he said that the cab that brought him had a rather "dull" license plate, 1729. Without a moment's hesitation, Ramanujan responded, "No, Hardy, it is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways!"

Why, of course it is! Anyone can see that! Yeah, right.

Here's a link to where I got the exact quote:
Weisstein, Eric W. "Hardy-Ramanujan Number." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hardy-RamanujanNumber.html

--Dunbar

thats awesome...thanks for the link..