I think missing here is that "=" should be a "≈", and that "b" should be an integer. Otherwise this is trivially false (consider 2!=b^2 if b must be integer) or true (if b need not be integer).
It's leading on to the next part: "What’s interesting is that b is very nearly a linear function of n. In hindsight it’s clear that this should be the case—it follows easily from Stirling’s approximation—but I didn’t anticipate this before I plotted it."
