MAA Writing Awards
The Strong Law of Small Numbers
Year of Award: 1989
Award: Lester R. Ford
Publication Information: The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 95, 1988, pp. 697-712
Summary: This paper contains 35 examples of patterns, taken largely from number theory and discrete mathematics, that seem to appear when one looks at several small examples but do not hold up under additional scrutiny, supporting the author's proposed law: "There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands to them."
About the Author(s): Richard K. Guy was at the University of Calgary at the time of publication.
