[texhax] dagger

[Victor Ivrii]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 10:19 PM, bcr <brock at quantifier.org> wrote:
>
> Unkind.  Just as I remember.  I thought Robin quit this list, when he
> decided that the frustration of
> questions grew too tiresome, and the rest of the list didn't rally to his
> defense.  Ah yes, here's the
> thread:
>
> http://www.tug.org/pipermail/texhax/2005-November/thread.html#4901
>
> Be sure to scroll to the bit where he calls Uwe Lück a toad.
>
>

Yeah, Robin is not a mother Teresa for sure but sharpening \dagger for
5 years is not also a behaviour of the Great Humanitarian.

Returning to the original question: "What \dagger does in this
document"? Robin's answer was very mathematical in the sense of the
following joke:

"Two guys were flying on the balloon above clouds and could not find
out their location. Suddenly there was an opening and they asked to a
man staying on the hilltop - 'Where are we?' Thinking few seconds the
man answered - 'On the balloon!' - 'This guy is a mathematician' -
said one of the travellers - 'as he answered after consideration, his
answer was absolutely precise and completely useless in the same
time'".

Let us recall where this insane LaTeX document came from. It was
generated by some OCR engine (I will try to compile it just for a )
and it was in expression asking to compare $2^{100\dagger}$ and
$(2^{100})!$. In this case the whole content matters - and my answer
is that most likely it was an OCR error and it should  be $2^{100!}$.
Sure it could be a reference note sign but it does not seem to be
likely.






Victor

-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii