🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <74...@pt.cs.cmu.edu> you write:
>This isn't really about computers, but it is about geniuses.
>Re: Knuth "humorously" posing Fermat's last theorem in his books:
>
>A friend of mine who went to Yale told me this story, 
>related by someone in an advanced (I think it was Topology) math
>class.
>
>The teacher would, as a "joke", pose certain unsolved problems 
>in exams and homework problem sets.
>The first time he did this, he asked if anyone had any luck with
>these problems.  
>Before he could say that these were unsolved,
>a certain quiet person in the back said,
>"Well, I got the first four but the fifth I'm not sure about."
>All five were previously unsolved problems...
>
>-- Steve

On the topic of hidden jokes in books, textbooks or otherwise, if you look
in the index of Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman's _Data_Structures_ under
recursion, you see a listing of about 10 page numbers including the number
of the page in the index that you are currently looking at...

-- 
Sean Colbath
col...@cs.rochester.edu			...uunet!rochester!colbath
"And now for something completely different..."

 In article <74...@pt.cs.cmu.edu> you write:
>The teacher would, as a "joke", pose certain unsolved problems 
>in exams and homework problem sets.
>The first time he did this, he asked if anyone had any luck with
>these problems.  
>Before he could say that these were unsolved,
>a certain quiet person in the back said,
>"Well, I got the first four but the fifth I'm not sure about."
>All five were previously unsolved problems...

I had a college instructor who delighted in throwing out these types of
question.  I think he felt like he was showing his smarts.  The problem I
had with this was that I didn't realize until near the end of the semester
that he was pulling this kind of gag.  What got me hacked was that, IMHO,
he was wrong in doing so, in that his questions were phrased

"Prove that ........"

If it had been phrased as

"Prove or disprove......"

I would have felt the question a bit more fair.
I caught on too late to get my grade up.
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=    More stupid questions available on request from                          =
-     bobc@attctc                     Your humble servant (real humble)       -
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

In article <1989Dec23....@cs.rochester.edu> col...@cs.rochester.edu (Sean Colbath) writes:

>On the topic of hidden jokes in books, textbooks or otherwise, if you look
>in the index of Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman's _Data_Structures_ under
>recursion, you see a listing of about 10 page numbers including the number
>of the page in the index that you are currently looking at...

This is true! In the '87 edition there is a self-referencing index note for
recursion.

Sorta reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game by Infocom--

>FOOTNOTE 8

This is the famous recursive footnote (Footnote 8).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Byrd              ! 
by...@husc7.harvard.edu !        "Uh, could you repeat the question?" 
Q-Link: John Byrd      !                         - Sid Vicious
CompuServe: 74506,3612 !
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------