By Doron Zeilberger
(Exclusively published in the Personal Journal of Shalosh B. Ekhad and Doron Zeilberger)
Written: Nov. 8, 2005.
The Integers 2005 Conference in honor of Ron Graham's 70th birthday, organized by Bruce Landman, (that ended a day before his real birthday on Oct. 31) was lots of fun. I learned a new joke (told by Ron Graham in the banquet: why do computer scientists confuse Christmas and Halloween? because OCT 31=DEC 25 (i.e. (3,1)8=(2,5)10)), and lots of new math. One of the many excellent talks was by Michael Spivey, who talked about determinants and the Binomial Transform. This immediately brought to mind my beloved master Gian-Carlo Rota, who unfortunately never made it to his 70th birthday, and it was fun to redo Michael Spivey's talk the Gian-Carlo way.