I'd like to tell you a little story.
Are you sitty comfortybobble two-square on your botty? Then I'll begin.
Once upon a time, there was a journal which ran a recreational mathematics
column.
It came to pass, that a certain fellow named Mad Teddy thought he had come
up with a mathematical idea which might interest readers of the recreational
mathematics column. He contemplated sharing his thoughts with the author of
the column, thinking that the author might be glad of an idea for an
article. So he wrote to the editors of the journal, and asked for the email
address of the author of the recreational mathematics column.
The editors told Mad Teddy in no uncertain terms that they didn't do that
sort of thing. However, they did agree to pass along a message from Mad
Teddy to the author. So Mad Teddy sent the message and waited.
Eventually Mad Teddy received an email from the author, who told Mad Teddy
in no uncertain terms that his idea was old hat, and might have been
interesting in the 1950's but certainly wasn't now; and furthermore, he
implied that Mad Teddy obviously didn't know how the column worked: he (the
author) wrote the articles, and people like Mad Teddy read
them.
Well, after that, Mad Teddy decided that he wasn't going to read them any
more. Furthermore, Mad Teddy decided right there and then that, one day, he
would have his own website and publish his idea all by himself.
And, eventually, that's exactly what happened.
And Mad Teddy and the journal didn't live happily ever after; because
shortly after the fiasco, the journal went significantly "down-market", and
Mad Teddy decided that not only would he no longer read the recreational
mathematics column (which had now ceased to exist anyway), he wouldn't even
buy the journal any more.
And he never did.
If you'd like to read my article - a 66Kb Word 97 document - on the
essential unity of a whole lot of apparently unrelated tests for
divisibility, you can click
here
.
NOTE: There is always a chance that Word documents may pick up
viruses or other nasties in their travels over the internet. Please see the
suggestions on my
home page
under SECURITY before downloading this if you have any doubts.
If you have a good command of college-level algebra, you shouldn't have too
much trouble following the article. I don't know if anything quite like this
has ever been published, either before or since the 1950's. I've had a bit
of a search, and found nothing. (If you know of anything similar, I'd be
interested to hear about it.)
Anyway, I hope you find as much interest in reading it as I had in nutting
out the details and writing it.
My home page
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A divisive issue
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