From: The CrapHead! Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet Subject: [alt.fan.douglas-adams] 42 in different bases Date: 14 Jun 1998 07:19:00 -0700 Subject: 42 in different bases From: Motti Lanzkron Newsgroups: alt.fan.douglas-adams I've posted this message on a different news server but it seems to be very possessive ;) so I'm re-posting, if you've seen it before, sorry! The theory that the ultimate question is what's 5*9 because that's 42 in base 13 was new to me and it led me to come up with the Lanzkron theorem. Theorem - Let X be a number greater than 10, X is an odd [not the most odd thing about this post] number iff [if and only if] there exists a natural number k so that -- 2X = 42 in base k, and then k= (X-11)/2 + 5 . The proof is elementary so I'll only give two examples... X=27 27>10 AND 27 is odd => k = (27-11)/2 +5 = 16/2 +5 = 8+5 = 13 therefore 2*27=54=5*9=42 base 13 (4*13^1 +2*13^0) 2X = 42 base 42 = 4*42^1 + 2*42^0 = 4*42 +2 = 168 + 2 = 170 X = 135 => 135>10 AND 135 is odd [DUH] Thanks you for reading this far and no, I don't have anything better to do, if you think I should get a life why don't you email me one??.