Kay Easton pushed briefly to the front of
the queue on Sun, 8 Dec 2002 19:11:16 +0000, and nailed this to the
shed door:

^ In article , Andy Spragg
^ writes
^ "flake" pushed briefly to the front of the
^ queue on Fri, 6 Dec 2002 12:33:12 -0000, and nailed this to the shed
^ door:
^
^ Hehe. I didn't add up all the component numbers to check that they
^ added up to 1331, but (being the sort of chap I am) I have to ask: is
^ there any significance in the number being 1331? On account of it
^ being 11 x 11 x 11? I mean, the chances of picking a random number and
^ it being a perfect cube are pretty slim, you know.
^
^ *How* slim? Let's have some accuracy here!

We-ell ... I don't think there is actually an answer in general. If we
confine the question to a realistic range, however; let's suppose we
were to pick a number between 1000 and 10000, that seems a reasonable
sort of magnitude and in particular it brackets 1331. 10 cubed is
1000, and 22 cubed is greater than 10000. So the perfect cubes between
1000 and 10000 are the numbers 10-21 cubed, inclusive; so picking a
number at random between 1000 and 10000, the chances of it being a
perfect cube are approximately 11/9001, or 0.12% - a little over 1 in
1000. I'd call that pretty slim.

Andy

--
sparge at globalnet point co point uk

Look after the sins of write-commission,
and the sins of read-omission will take care of themselves.