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Originally Posted by ebaines

And Tut - you stated that 8126 is the "most significant" perfect number - why is that? What makes that perfect number more "significant" than, say, either 496 or 33550336?

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Hi ebaines,

You'll have to join my sect to find out the answer to that (not really).

8126 is the most significant because it served to give me a date that was a long way from 2011. I thought a thousand years or so down the track was safe. Safe in terms of someone incorrectly thinking I might have some type of 'inside information'.

Regards

Tut

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Originally Posted by TUT317

8126 is the most significant because it served to give me a date that was a long way from 2011. I thought a thousand years or so down the track was safe.

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I'll go with 8,589,869,056. It's a perfect number, and being greater than 8 billion is really "safe." Plus it's pretty much in line with what scientists believe will be the life span of the earth. Sometime around then the sun will puff up into a red giant and the earth will have been incinerated. Now that's catastrophic!

I thought the perfect number was pi.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

I thought the perfect number was pi.

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Hi Tom,

I blame Ancient Greece, especially Pythagoras for this whole number religion thing. Pythagoras started a type of brotherhood which was a secret society of mathematicians who believed that numbers have special significance for the Gods and humans.

Pythagoras was of course famous for his x squared plus y squared equals z squared. We can imagine how excited he must have been when he was able to prove this formula was universal for all right angle triangles.

For ebaines to come up with 8,589,869,056 as a perfect number would have given him special status with the Brotherhood. Unfortunately Tom you would not have been so lucky. Pi is an irrational number and to suggest to Pythagoras there were such things as irrational numbers would have got you excommunicated on the spot.


Whatever you don't don't mention irrational numbers to anyone who is a Pythagorean.

Regards

Tut

I like a number that will burn out a computer before it solves the riddle.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

I like a number that will burn out a computer before it solves the riddle.

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Just recite the primes Tom