Graham's Number
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Graham's Number
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Graham's Number
#2My brain melts every time I watch this video [1] from Numberphile on Graham's number.
They also had another video [2] with Ron Graham himself :)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuigptwlVHo
Re: Graham's Number
#3[deleted]
Re: Graham's Number
#4It seems like the real character here is Graham, who I've never met, but I do have a story about his collaborator Bruce Rothschild, who was my professor for junior-level linear algebra.
In those days, you either gave your professors little self-addressed stamped postcards to tell you your grade, or went to their offices to ask them. I took the latter approach with Rothschild. "What grade were you expecting?", he replied. I confessed that I thought I would probably get an A. "You're getting an F", he said. "I'm giving everybody the opposite of what they expect."
Re: Graham's Number
#5Before clicking on the link, I thought for some reason this would be article explaining how Paul Graham had got his own number, much like the Erdos number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Erd.C5.91s_numb....
Re: Graham's Number
#6Here's an excellent and brain melting expose of Graham's Number: http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/1000000-grahams-number.html
Re: Graham's Number
#7Before clicking on the link, I thought for some reason this would be article explaining how Paul Graham had got his own number, much like the Erdos number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Erd.C5.91s_numb... .
How many steps removed are you from starting a company with Paul Graham...
Re: Graham's Number
#8Nothing really trumps this article on big numbers. http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html
Re: Graham's Number
#9"[T]he observable universe is far too small to contain an ordinary digital representation of Graham's number, assuming that each digit occupies one Planck volume."
Sheesh.
Re: Graham's Number
#10It seems like the real character here is Graham, who I've never met, but I do have a story about his collaborator Bruce Rothschild, who was my professor for junior-level linear algebra. In those days, you either gave your professors little self-addressed stamped postcards to tell you your grade, or went to their offices to ask them. I took the latter approach with Rothschild. "What grade were you expecting?", he repl…
I TA'd for Graham's Discrete math class at UCSD. He's still quite the character! His last lecture he juggled a handful of chalks in class and brought his deck of cards to do magic tricks.
He once made me pull out a 1$ bill from my pocket in his office and then asked me what the serial number was, he shot out a question like: "what's the probability that you have n consecutive numbers on the bill".
You could tell Math was legitimately fun for him, he treated open math problems like brain teasers and that fun rubbed off on the people around him as well.