fen@sri-unix (08/25/82)
I seem to remember a little story about the mathematician P.A.M.Dirac --
goes like this: It seems that one day some of the professors at the academy
that he was attending were arguing about the same sort of problem -- could
any integer be expressed with an equation involving at most 4 4's? Upon
hearing the debate, he quickly offered a way to express any (positive)
integer using only 3 2's:
n = 1/2 [- log {sqrt(sqrt(sqrt(...(2))))}]
2
where there are n (sqrt())'s. Of course, this is cheating because of the
n sqrt's, but so what?