Tupper's Self-Referential Formula

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuppersSelf-ReferentialFormula.html

by muon • 16 years ago

66 27 16 years ago

mathworld.wolfram.com

long• 16 years ago

this is awesome. how'd you stumble onto it?

muon2• 16 years ago

I found this via Futility Closet, which a constant source of really interesting stuff. (http://www.futilitycloset.com/)

Initially, I thought it's too good to be true, later found references in Wikipedia and Mathworld, and finally started to believe in it.

eru8• 16 years ago

Believe in it? This is math, you can check.

senki2• 16 years ago

"The formula itself is a general purpose method of decoding a bitmap stored in the constant n, so it could actually be used to draw any other image, and does not in fact contain any reference to itself."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuppers_self-referential_formul...

10ren• 16 years ago

As a high school student, I thrilled to the idea that long numbers (eg. pi digits) might contain messages. As a postgrad, I now know that the long numbers are actually a form of information (eg. a digital photograph is just a number: a sequence of bits).

Sadly, there's nothing exciting about it, as the interesting sequences occur very sparsely, just as the vast majority of bit sequences (out of all those possible) represent uninteresting digital photographs.

senki2• 16 years ago

Yes, the PI really contains all information on the world, since it's an infinite non-periodic number. The only problem is that it also contains all noise on the world, too. It's like a block of marble, that contains all great sculptures, you just have to remove bits from here and there...

Amnon• 16 years ago

Yes, it's a little disappointing. It's like saying the Unix cat is a self referential program since it can be used to display its own source code.

aaront• 16 years ago

This is one of my SE prof's close colleagues. He showed this in class.

zackattack• 16 years ago

Someone wanna prove this on WolframAlpha.com?

mattsouth• 16 years ago

That is a big number. This reminds me of the old adage about monkeys and typewriters eventually writing Shakespeare's plays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem)

Tupper's Self-Referential Formula

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