Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 32118
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2025/07/11 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/11    

1997/4/1 [Computer/Theory] UID:32118 Activity:nil
3/31    Someone once told me the story of some graduate math student
        who got to class so late that the class was over and there was
        some unsolved math theorem  on the board. he thought it was home-
        work and went home and solved it, and became famous. does anyone
        know if this is true?
          -kane
        \_ it sounds apocrophal
        \_ It is a true story.  The student was George Dantzig - android.
          \_ And what was the problem?
         \-I dont know the problem, but the answer was the Simplex
         Method. --psb
        \_ actually, i heard a similar story about John Milnor which goes like
        this: Milnor was in an undergraduate class at Princeton and came in
        late-- the prof had put an unsolved problem on the board and Milnor
        thought it was homework-- the problem was: is there a minimum turning
        angle for a nontrivial knot-- Milnor went home and proved that a
        non-trivial knot most turn though at least 4*pi (two revolutions)
        and so he published his first result at 18 years old-- kinda makes the
        rest of us mortals sick-- jkin
        \_ And I heard a similar story about someone different.  I think the
          blackboard /homework part is apocrophal (or at best, exaggerated)
          even tho the underlying problems and people are real.
        \_ http://www.urbanlegends.com
2025/07/11 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/11    

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www.urbanlegends.com
Urban Legends Site Search Engine Go What is an Urban Legend? It appears mysteriously and spreads spontaneously in many different forms. Urban legends often get their roots in fact, but it's their life after-the-fact that peaks their interest.