博文“世界上最短的数学论文”http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-81613-886469.html中所列的论文"Can n2 + 1 unit equilateral triangles cover an equilateral triangle of side > n, say n + ε?”的正文只有一个英文单词can。但是官网上找不到这篇论文。查了一遍，发现该博文中的下图

来自下图中的截图！！！

www.wfnmc.org/mc20101.pdf Building a Bridge III.pdf

原来该“最短论文”不过是作者的草稿，想冲击一下世界最短论文。这貌似严重背离了科技论文撰写的正途。

这篇“论文”后来被The American Mathematical Monthly 编辑把标题改成"Covering a Triangle with Triangles",  

再以框内插图的方式发表Covering a Triangle with Triangles__.pdf。编辑把标题里的疑问句移动到了正文。作者名和地址信息的排版方式也跟其他同期论文不同。这就解释了为何该文没有出现在同期论文的目录中http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly/american-mathematical-monthly-january-2005。该作者也在另外一篇论文里谈到该文的审稿过程：Predicting the Future Four Classic Conjectures of Mathematics.pdf

"I respectfully disagree that a short paper in general – and this paper in particular – merely due
to its size must be “a bit too short to be a good Monthly article.” Is there a connection between
quantity and quality? ... We have posed a fine (in our opinion) open problem and reported two
distinct ‘behold-style’ proofs of our advance on this problem. What else is there to explain?

The Monthly published our article [CS], but spoiled our single-word world record by unilaterally
including our title in the body of the article!"

Covering a Triangle with Triangles.pdf

有意思的是,Web of Science中可以检索到这篇论文，并被他引了2次。

所以世界上最短数学论文的“桂冠”应该非如下2篇论文莫属。

A counterexample to Euler's sum of powers conjecturehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2003475?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents  COUNTEREXAMPLE TO EULER'S CONJECTURE ON SUMS OF LIKE POWERS.pdf

On a conjecture of R. J. Simpson about exact covering congruences

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2325213 On a Conjecture of R. J. Simpson About Exact Covering Congruences.pdf

随着论文数量指数递增，摘要在上世纪九十年代应运而生，并已成为科技论文不可或缺的部分。所以现在要

想发表比上面2篇论文更短的论文几乎不可能。我们关注“短文”的目的应该是关注论文中每一个字符所能传出的正能量！