Why surge of interest in integral exponents from the Phillipines?
By Murray Bourne, 17 Dec 2006
I don't get this.
On Wed 13 Dec 2006 there was a surge of interest in "integral exponents" leading to a large number of hits via Yahoo and Google to the page Integral Exponents (on my Interactive Mathematics site).
Over the 8 days since 10 Dec, 68% of the hits occurred on Wed 13th.
On further investigation, most of the hits were from the Philippines and it appears that they were all from the same IP address, suggesting one computer. We're talking a few hundred hits here, in the space of a few minutes.
What I really think is that there must have been several computer labs involved, and where all the computers are presenting just one IP address to the world. (Normally, every computer that is on a network will have a unique IP address. But if you have a local network, often all the computers on that network appear as one. That's why you can't play some networked games using different computers on a home network, because the game software doesn't allow a second login since it thinks you are already logged in.)
Did these students all have an assignment to find out about "integral exponents"?
Could one of you from the Philippines please tell me why you got so excited about "integral exponents" on Wednesday?
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