RE: Rationality of free will in the multiverse

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 13:13:57 +0200

Doug Donaghue wrote



>Doug:
>> >As Douglas Adams so succinctly put it; "The answer is, in fact, 42."
> >
>> Bruno:
> > Yes, but Douglas Adams was wrong. Actually, it is 24. <g>
>>
> >
> >
>
>Hmmm.......... Does dyslexia cause a split in the multiverse?



Reality is a symphony directed by 4 concertmasters:
     the number e, the number pi, the number i and the number 24.
('course 0 and 1 play in the background).

:-)


Why the number 24? I just smell it!, Unfortunately I have not the time,
nor the space, nor the energy to help. It is linked to Ramanujan works
and to the use of number's partition in statistics.

See the following books for hints. The first one is perhaps, btw, my
favorite introduction to Numberland:

1) The Book of Numbers, by John H. Conway and Richard K. Guy,
    Copernicus-Springer-Verlag, 1996. (page 94sq)

Much more on 24 in the chapter 5 from the book:

2) The Theory of Partitions, by George E. Andrews, Cambridge University
Press 1984, paperback 1998, originally published by Addison-Wesley 1976.

Ok, 42 is the decimal mirror of 24. Doug (Adams) was not *so* wrong;
perhaps *he* was suffering dyslexia, after all ;)

More on statistics, number's partitions, young tableau, etc., later ...

Bruno
Received on Thu Aug 08 2002 - 04:19:29 PDT