Timeline for Have any long-suspected irrational numbers turned out to be rational?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 3, 2016 at 12:01 | comment | added | Benjamin Lindqvist | I must say, having the constant 1 named after you is straight ballin' | |
| May 12, 2011 at 17:16 | comment | added | André Henriques | Great picture at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/… | |
| Feb 28, 2011 at 15:38 | comment | added | Jeff Strom | @I. J. Kennedy: The same thing could be said of our guesses 100 years from now: if they had only looked at the first trillion digits, then they would have been led to the correct conjectures. | |
| Feb 28, 2011 at 15:09 | comment | added | Adam Hughes | I.J. Computing all the digits is the same as computing the number though, so I don't think that's a really valid counterpoint. | |
| Oct 16, 2010 at 3:50 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by S. Carnahan♦ | ||
| Jul 22, 2010 at 22:02 | comment | added | Micah Milinovich | I did some numerical computations and Legendre's guess of x/(log x+ 1.08...) nearly eqauls $\pi(x)$ when x=100,000. | |
| Jul 22, 2010 at 17:48 | comment | added | Simon Rose | In a similar vein, consider the fine structure constant in physics: Initial measurements showed it to be close to 1/137, so you had a bunch of physicists trying to justify why it had to be exactly 1/137, until we had more accurate measurements... | |
| Jul 22, 2010 at 17:29 | comment | added | I. J. Kennedy | (+1) I agree this is a good example! On the other hand, there is something different about Legendre's constant compared to the other examples. With the other examples, one could compute many digits (nowadays about as many as you'd ever care to see), while Legendre's estimate (1.08366) was wildly off by the third digit! If his calculations showed 1.0000023 or .999984, he certainly might have conjectured the exact value of 1. In short, I think there is a difference in the rationality surprise factor for numbers for which we can compute all the digits. | |
| Jul 22, 2010 at 16:25 | history | answered | Gjergji Zaimi | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
