23 Sept 2025 Daily Log

Great Amateur

I had to visit the hospital today to get some tests done, which got me off track for a large part of the day.

Maths

Fermat who lived in France from 1601 to 1665, was a lawyer by profession, attached to the provincial parliament at Toulause. It was not until he was in his thirties that he took up mathematics, as a hobby. Fermat was known as the Great amateur, he founded the subject of probability theory and the Fermat little theorem in a letter he wrote in 1640, Fermat observed that if a is any natural number, then p has to divide $a^{p - 1} - 1$. For example, where

$a=8$ $p=5$

$8^{5 - 1} - 1$ $\newline$ $8^4 - 1$

according to Fermat's observation. If you work this out you obtain $8^4$ ${ }$ $4096 - 1 = 4095$ and you can see that 5 does divide this number.

Notes from The Language of Mathematics: Keith Devlin

Prayer

Bible verse of the day was Ephesians 2:18.

For through him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father...

Language

Did mental maths exercises, progressing really well.

Fitness

Couldn't go to gym today, went to the outdoor park and did some stretches.