[HM] Abel's joke
Barry Cipra (cipra@microassist.com)
19 Jul 99 10:54:25 -0400 (EDT)
In a letter to his former teacher Holmboe, Abel gave the date as the
cube root of 6,064,321,219, with the hint to take the decimal fraction
into account (en comptant la fraction decimale). The cube root is
1823.590828, which after removing the integer part and multiplying by
365, gives 215.65. A footnote in Abel's Oeuvres interprets the
intended date as August 3 (the 215th day of the year), 1823, while
Oystein Ore, in his biography of Abel, gives it as August 4.
The question is, from what hat did Abel pull the number he used? The
more "sensible" choices would have been
(1823 + 215/365)^3 = 6,064,303,397
or
(1823 + 216/365)^3 = 6,064,330,730
In other words, does 6,064,321,219 have some other, possibly
number-theoretic significance which Abel might have known of? Or,
alternatively, is there an algorithm he could have used to produce it?
Or was he including the time of day?!
Barry Cipra
cipra@microassist.com