Quote:
Originally Posted by pzkpfw
I was wondering when someone would mention this. As it was a claim in the "marking the Moon thread" it had made me think of the monoliths in "2001 a space odyssey". I assumed that was the inspiration of the idea posted. According to the Wikipedia, the 1 4 9 ratio of the monoliths is the squares of the first three "integers".
This morning I dug out my copy of the book, as I wanted to see if back when it was written Arthur C. Clarke had used "integers" or "Primes" - and in it (my printing by Arrow, dated 1978 (I think)) he does use "integer".
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I too thought of 2001. But if 1, 2 and 3 are the first three integers, what about 0, 1 and 2? Or -1, 0 and 1? Or -2003, -2002 and -2001? Or... (You get the idea/)
I believe he should have said "natural numbers". There's scope for a quibble there (is 0 a natural number?) but not as much of one.