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From: bulko@ut-sally.UUCP (William C. Bulko)
Newsgroups: net.math,net.puzzle
Subject: Re: Exponent Duals
Message-ID: <1327@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Mar-85 00:21:07 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.1327
Posted: Sat Mar 16 00:21:07 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Mar-85 02:19:22 EST
References: <555@ahutb.UUCP> <653@oddjob.UUCP>
Reply-To: bulko@ut-sally.UUCP (William C. Bulko)
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 26
Xref: watmath net.math:1904 net.puzzle:612
Summary: 

[ bug off! ]

It was interesting seeing this problem haunt me again.  When I was a freshman
majoring in math, I took my first CS course (in FORTRAN) and struck up a
"protege" relationship with my professor.  One of the research projects he
later assigned me involved studying a multiple-precision package available
on the university's computer to aid in a computer solution to this very same
problem.  I played around with a mathematical approach to the problem
(behind his back) and came up with a complete solution and some interesting
graphs!  Eagerly, I presented the stuff to him -- and he smiled, saying,
"That's pretty good!  Here, take a look at this."  He then handed me the
first draft of an article one of his colleagues was writing about the
problem, containing all of which I had done, times 10 -- an a footnote
acknowledging that Euler had done all of this years ago.

     I still have that draft of the article.  Perhaps that incident was
one of the driving forces that made me shift to computer science in grad
school.


-- 
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		    "To err is human;  to admit it is not."
Bill Bulko					Department of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas      {ihnp4,harvard,gatech,ctvax,seismo}!ut-sally!bulko
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