little: "So please feel free to e-mail it (or even a link) to me."

Actually, it was just a joke... and since the explanation is sort of interesting, I'll go into it.

Take the equation of this general form, rendered here in Perl:

($x**$n + $y**$n) == $z**$n;

The Pythagorean Theorem, which you doubtless remember, involves a special case:

($x**2 + $y**2) == $z**2;

In 1637, Pierre de Fermat claimed that the general equation was false for any case where ($n > 2); this became known as Fermat's Last Theorem. The theorem was proven only recently, in enormously complex fashion, after about 350 years of anguished mathmeticians losing sleep over it.

Which brings us to the joke. Fermat, in describing his theorem, noted, "I have discovered a truly marvellous proof, which this margin is too narrow to contain." Which is fairly ridiculous; he pretty certainly discovered no such thing. And neither have I.

In reply to RE: RE: RE: RE: JARTUP (Just Another Reason to Use Perl) by Petruchio
in thread JARTUP (Just Another Reason to Use Perl) by AgentM

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.