Peter once told me that when he was a kid, he left a note on a slip of paper in a library book for a future reader to find. The note said, “I’ll be a pie-eyed emu,” and added something like “If you understand this, contact me” and his address or possibly phone number.<\/p>\n
He explained to me that he had at the time just discovered the equation<\/p>\n
\neiπ<\/sup> + 1 = 0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
which he was delighted by: it combined the numbers e, i, pi, 1, and 0 in one equation.<\/p>\n
And he wanted to find other like-minded people. So he figured that anyone who understood that his note was a reference to that equation would be a like-minded person. Kind of a message in a bottle, tossed out to the world in hope of finding kindred spirits.<\/p>\n
(It reminds me of the Wilmar Shiras stories “In Hiding” and “Opening Doors,” which Peter introduced me to, in which at one point a super-bright boy posts a cryptic ad in hopes of finding others like him. In fact, it’s possible Peter wrote the note after reading those stories; I’m not sure. He probably would’ve read them around age ten or eleven.)<\/p>\n
But I never quite understood Peter’s anecdote about leaving that note; in particular, although I could see the I and the pi and that the equals sign could be read as “be,” I never understood why “e” would become “emu.”<\/p>\n