Solution to Problem 32


Congratulations to this week's winners

Mike Fitzpatrick, Ryan Vaughan, and Tim Parks

Correct solutions were also received from Abhi Dattasharma, Andreas Low, Yang Lu, Murat Ozkan, Bill Rosenberg, BHActuary, and Sid.


All solutions but one offered , or some slight variation on this theme. Although the solution is certainly correct, the mathematician in me needs to point out that it requires some substantial mathematics to show that either e or ln(2) is irrational.

The solution sent in by Abhi Dattasharma was really sweet. Appropriately, he says saw the answer in seconds! Here it is:

Admittedly, it takes as much work to show that is irrational as that e is irrational.

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Postscript: After posting the solution above, I received two improvements based on Dattasharma's solution and requiring no substantial mathematical knowledge. The first came from Thomas Teo. He observes that if is irrational, then Dattasharma's solution will suffice. On the other hand if that number is rational, that makes irrational which when raised to the power of will do the trick. Jan Siwanowicz offered a similar improvement.

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Page last updated 6 April 1998.