Thursday, May 12, 2016

Interesting numbers

There is an old paradox in the world of mathematics that is known as the “interesting number paradox.” Simply put, if you keep counting natural numbers, eventually you’ll encounter one that isn’t interesting; where it gets paradoxical is that by virtue of being the smallest uninteresting number, that number has now become interesting.
Of course, this is all subjective, as it relies on a vague definition of the word “interesting.” Very generally speaking, a number is considered interesting if it has some type of mathematical quality that sets it apart; 19 is interesting because it’s prime, 999 is interesting because it’s a palindrome (and the UK version of 911); 24 is interesting because (among other reasons) it’s the largest number divisible by all numbers less than its square root. Mathematicians

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