2004, John Conway and Alexander SoiferBoth are working on mathematics. Princeton UniversityIt was submitted to American Mathematics Month What they believed was “a new world record in word counts.” [math] paper. “
Soifer I’ll explain it: “On April 28, 2004… I submitted a paper containing only two drawings, “N2 + 2 Can” and “2 Can.” [See one of them above.]”The story continues:American Mathematics Month Surprisingly, I didn’t know what to do about the new world record for two-word articles. Two days later, on April 30, 2004, Mrs. Margaret Combs, editor’s assistant, approved the receipt of the paper.”
Monthly Mathematics Expos publishes mathematics expos on many levels, with long and short articles included. But your article is a bit too short to be a good monthly article… One or two line explanations are really helpful.
Soifer Writer: “I asked John the same day at coffee hour. [ConÂway]’What do you think? ‘His answer was concise, ‘Don’t give up too easily’. Therefore, I answered [to] The same day every month”:
I oppose it in honor of the fact that short papers in general, and this paper in particular, must be “a little too short to be a good monthly article” due to its size. Is there a relationship between quantity and quality? …We raised an open question of fines (in our opinion) and reported two different “sample” proofs on this issue. What else is there to explain?
Soifer adds:monthlyIt seems he felt like he was making a sound. On May 4, 2004, the reply was monthlyTop Gun, Editor-in-Chief Bruce Parka:
We publish two types of papers every month. “Articles” are substantial descriptive papers that are approximately 6-25 pages long and are shorter and often somewhat technical (usually a 1-5 page range). You can send your paper to the Note Editor if you wish, but he expects that he will not be interested in it because of the lack of its length and substantial attachment text. Recently, the standard way to use such short papers seems to be “boxed fillers” on pages that contain a lot of blank spaces that publishers dislike. If you allow us to use your papers like that, I would be happy to let it be published.
Soifer concludes: “John Conway and I embraced ‘Filler’ and our paper was published in the January 2005 issue. “victory!
obtain More details on the backstory here.
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