yeah, this is from some old brain-teaser that ian responded to. i remember him showing us a google search on his name and his response to this was in a Usenet group.
haha... man! you blew my cover! yeah, guys this is ian's from like 1996
actually, it was an extra credit problem in my math class, and i couldn't get all the answers so i asked in a math newsgroup
ahhh. so you wanted extra credit so you tried to fool everyone in the newsgroup into helping you out by telling them it was a neat-0 brain-teaser. slick.