Saturday, April 24, 2010

4697944


There's a number, at least one of them, that has been mentioned the same number of times in history as its value. For example, the number "2348968" has only been written or mentioned in that sequence 2348968 times. The nature of these rare numbers, unfortunately, prevents us from ever truly discovering them.
Let's put this into a scenario; Professor Jean-Paul is a famous mathematician. No lie. He invents a time machine for the sole purpose of discovering the kind of magical number. Obviously, simply discovering time travel won't get him that Nobel Prize. So he records every number in in history and discovers that the number of times that "2348968"has been used is equal to 2348968. But silly Jean-Paul, the dense mathematician that he happens to be, forgets to include all of the times that he recorded the number. So, instead of finding a magical number, 2348968 has been used 4697936 times, or 2(234896).
Even the explanation of my number theory is setting "2348968" further away from it's magical properties. Now the total number of times that "2348968" has been mentioned is at 4697944.

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