Day with a Difference - april 25, 2006

Today's Inspirational Quote:

Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want and do. - Emmanuel Swedenborg

Ramanujan's taxicab numbers

Ramanujan (1887 - 1920) made substantial contributions to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series.Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who collaborated with G. H. Hardy in the early part of the twentieth century. Ramanujan was visited in hospital by Hardy, who had traveled in taxi number 1729, and remarked that 1729 was a rather boring number. According to the story, Ramanujan immediately countered that 1729 was in fact a very interesting number, being the smallest positive integer which is the sum of two perfect cubes in two different ways. Indeed, 1729 = 103 +93 = 123 +13.
Using a spreadsheet, one can find all such "taxicab numbers" within a specified range; for example those numbers less than 5000 that are expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.

Expand your knowledge base

Letter Equations are well known phrases or facts where the key words have been replaced with the first letter of that word. These are often in the form of an equation, which contain a number, an = sign and the rest of the obscured phrase or fact.

4 = P on a C T .. Scroll down for the answer















4 = Players on a Curling Team (Lead, Second, Third, & Skip)

Have a memorable day!
Priya