Constants with formulae of the form treated by D.~Bailey, P.~Borwein, and S.~Plouffe (\emph{BBP formulae} to a given base $b$) have interesting computational properties, such as allowing single digits in their base $b$ expansion to be independently computed, and there are hints that they should be \emph{normal} numbers, {\em i.e.,} that their base $b$ digits are randomly distributed. We study a formally limited subset of BBP formulae, which we call \emph{Machin-type BBP formulae}, for which it is relatively easy to determine whether or not a given constant $\kappa$ has a Machin-type BBP formula. In particular, given $b \in \mathbb{N}$, $b>2$, $b$ not a proper power, a $b$-ary Machin-type BBP arctangent formula for $\kappa$ is a formula of the form $\kappa = \sum_{m} a_m \arctan(-b^{-m})$, $a_m \in \mathbb{Q}$, while when $b=2$, we also allow terms of the form $a_m \arctan(1/(1-2^m))$. Of particular interest, we show that $\pi$ has no Machin-type BBP arctangent formula when $b \neq 2$. To the best of our knowledge, when there is no Machin-type BBP formula for a constant then no BBP formula of any form is known for that constant.

Let $a$ be a natural number greater than $1$. Let $f_a(n)$ be the order of $a$ mod $n$. Denote by $\omega(n)$ the number of distinct prime factors of $n$. Assuming a weak form of the generalised Riemann hypothesis, we prove the following conjecture of Erd\"os and Pomerance: The number of $n\leq x$ coprime to $a$ satisfying $$\alpha \leq \frac{\omega(f_a(n)) - (\log \log n)^2/2 }{ (\log \log n)^{3/2}/\sqrt{3}} \leq \beta $$ is asymptotic to $$\left(\frac{ 1 }{ \sqrt{2\pi}} \int_{\alpha}^{\beta} e^{-t^2/2}dt\right) \frac{x\phi(a) }{ a}, $$ as $x$ tends to infinity.