What's special about this number? (0-9999)

http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/numbers.html

by ottbot • 16 years ago

27 11 16 years ago

www2.stetson.edu

joshu• 16 years ago

I wonder which one is least special.

e1ven• 16 years ago

Wouldn't that then become a self-fulfilling loop? That number's non-specialness would be something special about it, so you'd need the next non-special number, and so on until they were all covered.

aquadoctorbob2• 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

pw0ncakes2• 16 years ago

The lowest dominated strategy for the "smallest unique integer" game with 3 players.

mrfish2• 16 years ago

I thought "42" was the meaning of life?

fbu• 16 years ago

9945 = 17!!!!

I can't stop laughing at this one.

DanHulton• 16 years ago

...why?

aquadoctorbob2• 16 years ago

Well, in writing -- Internet discourse in particular -- multiple exclamation marks are occasionally (ab)used to indicate absurd levels of emotional intensity on the part of the speaker. The factorial operation is also denoted by an exclamation mark; to someone unfamiliar with that fact, or someone capable of intentionally conflating the two usages, it appears that the statement "9945 = 17!!!!" represents someone excitedly asserting a falsehood (i.e. "9945 = 17") or possibly suggesting that shouting a number somehow increases its value.

Each line on the linked article is a more-or-less stoic mathematical fact, and the humor comes from the subversion of this expectation when the entry for 9945 is misinterpreted as I described.

pohl• 16 years ago

I noticed most (maybe all) of the links go to wolfram math world. Out of curiosity, I compared a few entries there against Wikipedia, and I like the latter a lot better. My sample size was pretty small, though.

What's special about this number? (0-9999)

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