Today, Google boasts of someone’s 410th anniversary, IIRC, who claimed to have proven that x^n + y^n <> z^n. However, there are instances where this is true! So, despite that this proof exists…doesn’t one hole in the proof blow the whole proof away? What’s the SD from the SD’s mathematicians?
from wikipedia
“In number theory, Fermat’s Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two.”
Also, for x, y, z and n all positive integers. If you’ve managed to find a counterexample even with these restrictions, then that would be very interesting indeed.
What instances were you thinking of?
It is true that one counterexample would falsify the entire theorem. As far as I’m aware, no such counterexample has been found.
It’s was only proved in the 1990s by Andrew Wiles.
I’m guessing you’ve simply forgot the condition n > 2.
If you don’t use superscripts, it becomes a totally different equation. Your exponents become coefficients.
This.
I, too, would really like to know what counterexamples the OP is thinking of.
5!
No… 6.
Hmm.
7?
OK wait just a sec, I had this down somewhere… brb
I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for clarification. Jinx rarely returns to his threads to answer questions or acknowledge replies.
I bet Jinx was thinking of this one:
9[sup]3[/sup] + 10[sup]3[/sup] = 12[sup]3[/sup] + 1[sup]3[/sup]
Perhaps he’ll at least leave a marginal response that there isn’t room enough to provide the answer here.
Damn you, sco3tt! Bastard took my joke! 
I actually managed to reference X^2+Y^2=Z^2 in an archeology class I was taking. The professor was talking about the mathematical relationships in temples that were built in Sicily by the Greeks. I pointed out that a temple had 6 columns on one side and 13 on the long side. That meant that the spaces between the columns was 5 spaces and 12 spaces. This meant that the hypotenuse was equal to 13 spaces and that 5^2+12^2=13^2 which was a Pythagorean triple. He ended writing a paper about that and other mathematical relationship in the temple and I got a footnote.
I was teaching an Internet Basics workshop today and went to Google. Understandably, the class was a little confused by the logo. One asked “What’s that?” in a bewildered way, and when I turned to look at the screen, I said somewhat off-hand (because I wanted to get back to the topic and not get bogged down in a discussion of Google’s logo games), “That’s Fermat’s last theorem, I think.”
At least one person when I turned back around had that “Do you know everything?” look on their face that librarians get sometimes.
Good times.
How 'bout zero cubed plus zero cubed equals zero cubed?
Can’t blame a guy for trying…
That’s a good example, for sufficiently large values of 0.
-D/a
Sorry, I had to do it. It’s not often that a philistine like me gets to crack a history joke in a room full of mathematicians.