It looks like Excel is not up to the task of even checking the answer.
The answer is close to Excel's limit before it starts losing least digits, before you even think about squaring.
They found a solution that was close and accepted it.?ÿ #pun
@mathteacher Dave was in the cell next to Christopher Havens,????
@mathteacher?ÿ No cheating; Just very good research on your part. I now remember the P.S. article.
Thanks again and I will let you know about what I find out from Mathematica.
?ÿ
You know, I hate to be a doubting Thomas (well, not really) but if you go here, you'll find a widget added to Wolfram Alpha in 2010 that calculates the answer. While 1729 is a storied number, I'm not sure that its Pell solution has magical properties. Maybe it is of high-level math paper significance; I guess I need to read the paper.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/widgets/view.jsp?id=fce23d652d7daf349cdbef6bda6d6c3f
?ÿ
I ran?ÿ the Pell's equation solver solution through the full precision calculator at 800 digits precision and it confirmed y = 1072885712316 is correct.?ÿ Told 'ya it is a big number!
Amazing that Bugg's solution y = 1729*13! was only 9% off, kudos to him.
Well, I did read the paper and it is high-level stuff. It's loosely related to the Pell equation, but the media made it seem (to me at least) that the paper was about the problem posed.
I stand corrected and will doubt no more.
@mathteacher:?ÿ That's it. I saw that article flipping around on the internet and then forgot where I saw it.?ÿ I knew someone on this board would recover it or at least solve the problem
Actually I was visiting John in the cell next to Christopher Havens.
I don't know where Dave got the problem, but here's one documented source:?ÿ
https://interestingengineering.com/can-you-solve-this-prison-inmates-viral-math-riddle
The article is dated Feb 26, 2021 (yesterday),?ÿ so I missed it when Google-cheating several days ago.
@mathteacher:?ÿ?ÿ
That or a similar article headline was in one of my news feeds a few days ago and I did not click on it.?ÿ Missed my chance to be on top of things.
If you view it as a right triangle with one leg equal to 1 and the other 1727*y^2, the difference between the hypotenuse and the longer leg is about 1.12E-14. That's 1.12 times 10 to the negative 14.
See, it's ok to be a foot off if the lines are long enough!
@dave-lindell?ÿ True Dave but did you have to tell all? Great post on the problem?ÿDAVE. Hope you do more.
JOHN
