Richard Elwes
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Jun 21 at 9:09pmWeb
Show threadgjmJul 7

@richardelwes Many years ago I was at a maths conference. There was an initial meeting with everyone where they told us various admin things, including that the entry code for some building or other was 2143. "That'll be easy to remember," I said, "because it's the nearest integer to 22 pi^4". The person sitting next to me thought this was very strange.

((2143/22)^(1/4) is a startlingly good approximation to pi -- relative error is about 3x10^-10 -- found by Ramanujan.)

Show threadJeremy KunJul 7
@gjm @richardelwes get one anecdote for each 4 digit number and you'll be a wizard
Show threadAditya KhannaJul 7
@j2kun @gjm @richardelwes ngl I wanted to do that for my YouTube channel. Covering numbers and types of numbers but it became general math xD kinda what happened to numberphile
Show threadgjmJul 7
@j2kun @richardelwes Unfortunately 1729 seems to have been a rather dull year, with nothing of great importance happening. I hope it isn't an unfavourable omen.
Show threadMark DominusJul 7
@gjm @richardelwes My ninth-grade math teacher remarked that a mnemonic for \( \sqrt 3\) was to recall that George Washington had been born in 1732, and ever since then I've been able to remember when George Washington was born.
Show threadgjmJul 7

@mjd @richardelwes Which in turn reminds me that the mathematician J E Littlewood had difficulty remembering the name of F A Lindemann (an eminent and politically influential British scientist, who seems to have been rather a nasty person) until one day he noticed that he shared a surname with C L F von Lindemann (a mathematician who proved that pi is a transcendental number).

After noticing that, Littlewood ... could no longer remember the name of the mathematician who proved that pi is transcendental.

Show thread0xDEJul 7
@gjm @richardelwes Our seminar is often in a room numbered 1423. We remember it as the permutation room, but that's also how I would remember your room number.
Show threadgjmJul 7
@11011110 @richardelwes For the avoidance of doubt, I never thought that anyone would actually remember "ah, I just need to compute pi^4 and multiply by 22"; obviously that's no more memorable than 2143 itself. My actual meaning was more along the lines of "it's the numerator in that approximation of Ramanujan's", but I thought it was funnier to say it the way I did.