SMOG.NET. Le journal inversé. David Madore. If there were a beauty prize for mathematical objects, I think the Steiner system of index (5,8,24) (I will describe what this means in a moment) would be one of the most serious candidates. It is something extremely easy to define (but not so easy to exhibit or represent!) But of breathtaking intellectual elegance and having absolutely unique and “magical” properties. This is the sort of mathematical objects that holds (for me) all the fascination that numerology can have for some people, except that there is “really something” there (when I get mystical, I think: some deep insight into the fabric of reality). To define naïvely what a Steiner system of index (5,8,24) means is, as I just said, very easy: it is a set of 24 “points” (objects, elements, whatever) together with 759 “blocks”, each consisting of 8 points, having the property that any 5 of the 24 points lie in one and only one of the 759 blocks.
The Steiner system of index (5,8,24) has a large number of automorphisms 24. Envie d'entreprendre. Le sarkozy blog officiel satirique. Blog de Loic Le Meur. Versac.net. Meilcour.fr.