Smaller Discs to Cover the Unit Circle

Here is a paper I wrote a while back in 2003 and wanted to publish to a math magazine:

Smaller Discs to Cover the Unit Circle

It details a solution to a geometry question asked in 1962, which is better than other published answers.



Just when I finished, I looked around for more references and related work, after MathWorld and all those sources. Well, it turns out that two other people

D. Nagy, Fedesek es alkalmazasaik, M.Sc. thesis, Eotvos Lorland Univ., Budapest, 1974.
S. Krotoszyski, Covering a disk with smaller disks, Studia Sc. Math. Hungar. 28 (1993) 277[283; MR 95c:52035.

Both had published the same solution I came up with. Really, who would spend the time to solve such an esoteric problem? Nerds!

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