I stumbled across this interesting paper about the subject at some point: http://cogprints.org/3667/1/APRI-PH-2004-12b.pdf http://cogprints.org/3667/1/APRI-PH-2

I stumbled across this interesting paper about the subject at some point: http://cogprints.org/3667/1/APRI-PH-2004-12b.pdf http://cogprints.org/3667/1/APRI-PH-2004-12b.pdf I know a lot of you will gloss over this, but I think you will be surprised at how interesting it is if you read it. Basically, it tries to see if mathematical equations have meaning by determining how well they "compress" the results. For instance, the author says the equation eπ−π=19.9990999... is compressible (the equation generates more bits of π than it takes up itself), and thus it is likely that there is some mathematical reason for this -- it's not just a coincident. On the other hand, 314100 gives an approximation to π but does not compress its representation, so there is nothing intriguing about this formula.