From the article: “Their rare and at times fraught collaboration makes for an entertaining film. This is in spite its sprinkling in bits of math throughout, which some viewers might find daunting. For example, upon hearing about a taxi’s number 1729, Ramanujan pointed out that that it’s the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways (1 cubed plus 12 cubed and 6 cubed plus 10 cubed).”
Did anyone else read this and immediately know it’s wrong?
The 6 is just upside down! Should be 9. I knew the story so knew right away the post here was wrong!
Yes
1 x 1 x 1 = 1
12 x 12 x 12 = 1728
1 + 1728 = 1729
9 x 9 x 9 = 729
10 x 10 x 10 = 1000
729 + 1000 = 1729
Therefore, 1 cubed plus 12 cubed = 1729 and 9 cubed plus 10 cubed also equals 1729. Thus, no error in the statement.