I did not peruse rec.arts.sf-lovers, so I would likely have seen Doug Ingram's followup message. I'm sure I told Eric Weisstein back when he was working on the Treasure Troves of Science, which is how it would have found its way into the CRC Encyclopedia of Mathematics, and Wolfram MathWorld. I have never heard anything about it in the literature prior to 1989, nor anything more about it from the presumed discoverer. All subsequent references could reasonably be traced back to me. So I guess that if I had not told Eric about it, this little nugget might have been lost. It would be nice to see the MathWorld article updated to acknowledge the likely source. Nice piece of detective work, btw. On 4/29/2012 8:10 AM, Robert Munafo wrote:
I traced it back to apparently the originator of the .sig file:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf-lovers/browse_thread/thread/639d7...
I've added this to my entry on pi^4+pi^5:
mrob.com/pub/math/numbers-12.html#lb403_428
Original USENET messages follow:
----8<--snip-here---- Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers From: so...@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu (Soren G. Frederiksen -- Ohio State University) Date: 3 Jul 89 12:22:36 GMT Local: Mon, Jul 3 1989 8:22 am Subject: Piers Anthony
In article<2...@maytag.waterloo.edu>, gigu...@aries5.uucp (Eric Giguere) writes:
One thing I find very interesting about Piers Anthony is his penchant for multi-volume series. Now I don't really mind this, but there's a problem: the first two or three books in the series (or maybe just the first) are very enjoyable, but things taper off from there. As examples consider "On a Pale Horse" and "A Spell for Chameleon". But the latest Xanth novels (what's he up to now? 10? 11?) and the last three in the Incarnations series haven't been as good as the series openers, at least in my opinion. I agree with you to a certain extent, I prefer the first few books of the Xanth series much more than the later books. However, personally I think that the first and the last books in the Incarnations series are the best, which is interesting considering that the sixth book seems to be more of an after thought. ---- Hmmmm, I wonder if that says something about my or Piers Anthony's personality in that the best books are about death and evil??? Soren Frederiksen
4 5 6 PI + PI = e ????? Strange enough to be true.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers From: v...@unix.cie.rpi.edu (VICC Project (Rose)) Date: 3 Jul 89 17:57:22 GMT Local: Mon, Jul 3 1989 1:57 pm Subject: Re: Piers Anthony
In article<2...@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu>, so...@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu (Soren G. Frederiksen -- Ohio State University) writes:
4 5 6 PI + PI = e ????? Strange enough to be true.
Not quite according to my HP41 but close enough to be interesting. I get 6 403.4287935 for e and 4 5 403.4287761 for PI + PI Frank Filz ----8<--snip-ends----
On 2012-04-28, David Wilson<davidwwilson@comcast.net> wrote:
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.