Top Ten numbers

Leo

Well-known member
i have some favorite numbers, many related to following sports as a kid. in no particular order:

714 (babe ruth career home runs)
63 (longest US football field goal by Saints' kicker Tom Dempsey, in yards)
7 (just like the way it looks, also number worn by Red Sox outfielder Reggie Smith)
12 (NY Jets' Joe Namath, as well as numerous other great quarterbacks)
666 (obvious)
69 (ditto)
 
I have synaesthetic responses to some numbers

27 - beige yellow, slender
95 - round, red white and blue
8 - green, a postbox
12 - a coin spinning to a stop, increasing in frequency
9 - biting into a white bread and coal sandwich
38 - an overstuffed green leather badger

That kind of thing.
 

Leo

Well-known member
i also like 9. as with 7, i like it visually, i like the balance of it.

but it also seems vaguely heroic, representing the last step before succumbing to all the multi-digit numbers. it's teetering on the edge, mindful of the threshold, the final holdout making the valiant last stand of the single digit tribe.

am i projecting?
 
i also like 9. as with 7, i like it visually, i like the balance of it.

but it also seems vaguely heroic, representing the last step before succumbing to all the multi-digit numbers. it's teetering on the edge, mindful of the threshold, the final holdout making the valiant last stand of the single digit tribe.

am i projecting?

9 marks the end of a better time. 10 is wintry, a puddle by the kerb.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
We should have a top ten top ten.

A friend of mine once had a dream about him doing precisely this, which I think then regressed even further in a way that is unimaginable to the waking mind. I'm not sure he's been the same since.

Kaprekar's constant is remarkable, and making my mind ache.
 

muser

Well-known member
it sounds a lot like cellular automata with iterations leading to oscillating patterns and non-moving patterns.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
i and 1729 (the Ramanujan taxicab number) definitely need to be in there...

Also Graham's number, which is (or used to be) the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof. The observable universe is far too small to contain a digital representation of it, even if the size of each digit goes down to the Planck length. The discoverer pretty much had to invent a new system of notation just to write it down. It was, at the time, the best proveable upper bound on the possible values of a quantity in graph theory for which no-one has yet found a concrete example greater than 13.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You can't beat 6 - it's perfect!

ava-smack.gif
 

woops

is not like other people
I want to see some love for the square root of minus one

If you like 666 you may be interested to know the A666 runs through Blackburn.
888 is the number of Man. Never really understood that though.
555 is a lucky number in China I'm told.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I want to see some love for the square root of minus one

You might have missed my post, it was pretty mnml.

Is it true that buildings in China often have a floor '3a' (or the equivalent) because the words for 'four' and 'death' sound very similar? Or is just one of those things people say and everyone assumes it's true?

I'm quite partial to the Euler–Mascheroni constant.
 
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