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Encoding a Phrase in a Number
Think of a sequence of letters and spaces as a number in base
.
Let a single-space correspond to 0, the letter
to 1,
to 2,
...,
to 26. Thus, e.g., ``HARVARD'' denotes a number written in
base
. The corresponding number written in decimal is
:
HARVARD
To recover the digits of the number, repeatedly divide by
:
and so on.
Subsections
William A Stein
2001-10-01