charles babbage, the english mathematician and father of the modern computer wrote the following to alfred tennyson in response to his poem, “the vision of sin” »

In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

… If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 ¹/₁₆ is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 ¹/₁₆ will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.”

(via ragbag)