From: Don Woods <don@navilinks.com>
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Subject: [rec.puzzles] Re: Free Cell
Date: 13 Jan 1999 06:09:26 -0000

Subject: Re: Free Cell
From: Keith Ellul <kbellul@laurent.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles

On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Eric Sosman wrote:

> > [...] the total number is (52! / 4! 4!)
> > This is about 1.4 million...  Unless if I am missing something [...]
> 
> You're definitely "missing something:" fifty-nine orders of magnitude.
> A small error in the Grand Scheme, no doubt, but it may be the largest
> numerical error I have ever seen anywhere.

Glad to be part of the record...

> There's a cartoon in which Dilbert interviews a terminally clueless kid:
> 
> 	Dilbert: "How many people died in World War II?"
> 	T.C.K: "Duh, 600?"
> 	Dilbert: "The correct answer is fifteen million."
> 	T.C.K: "Oh - rounding."

Stupid little xcalc program... yeah... about 4 seconds of thought before 
hitting send would have helped here...

See, the number was too big to fit in the window... so I saw 1.4e+6
instead of 1.4e+65.  Yeah, this is one of my bigger errors... at least
I got the 1.4 part right ;-)

Pay attention kids... this is what happens when you foolishly believe that
you can face the world without caffeine...