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Re: An arithmetic puzzle, equality of numbers.

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg103100] Re: [mg103086] An arithmetic puzzle, equality of numbers.
• From: Syd Geraghty <sydgeraghty at me.com>
• Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 05:56:48 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <200909070637.CAA04051@smc.vnet.net>

Richard,

What a wicked puzzle.

I will probably regret it but I confirm your results for Mathematica 7  
on Snow Leopard and now I am hooked to try and understand what is  
going on.

I also note that i==0, i==2, AND i==i !!!!

Happy labour day.

Cheers .... Syd


Syd Geraghty B.Sc, M.Sc.

sydgeraghty at mac.com

Mathematica 7.0.1 for Mac OS X x86 (64 - bit) (18th February 2009)
MacOS X V 10.6 Snow LeopardMacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo  2GB  
RAM



On Sep 6, 2009, at 11:37 PM, Richard Fateman wrote:

> For[i = 1.11111111111111111111, i > 0, Print[i = 2*i - i]]
>
> This came to my attention (again), and I thought it might amuse
> current readers of this newsgroup.
>
> What looks like an infinite loop terminates with i==0 being true.   
> also
> i==2 is true.  (Tested in Mathematica 6.0; I don't have access to 7  
> yet.)
>

• References:
  • An arithmetic puzzle, equality of numbers.
    • From: Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu>