Monday, December 7, 2009

The Power of the Internet

In this blog I reflect on a recent experience, which showed my the power of the internet.

Followers of my blog may have noticed that I wrote an article about the number 3435. In that article I generalized one of the properties 3435 has i.e.

$3^3 + 4^4 + 3^3 + 5^5 = 3435$

I defined Munchausen numbers in base b and proved that there are only finitely many Munchausen numbers in any base. Although I appreciated the result I never expected that the article would be read. This is where the power of the internet enters the stage.

Soon after I posted my article on the internet, a Andrew Baxter mailed my with some comments and suggestions. After including Andrew's suggestions and posting a new version of the article, I was content. Someone else had read my article, and it wasn't my mom.

After that I got an other mail, this time by Tracy Harms. He told my that my article inspired a discussion on Twitter. The discussion was about understanding the source of a program in the programming language J.

I just finished googling "Munchausen Numbers" and there are numerous links all about an article I wrote. Without the internet nobody (besides my mom) would have read my article, let alone reacted on it. This experience showed my the power of the internet. And I am in awe.