Email: Password: Remember Me | Create Account (Free)

Back to Subject List

Thread Closed: Thread will re-open when original poster replies

???
08/10/06 16:36
Read: times


 
#121974 - 801
Responding to: ???'s previous message
I was going to say that 801 is a dull number but then:-

The interesting number paradox is a semi-humorous paradox that arises from attempting to classify numbers as "interesting" or "dull." 1729, for example, may be called an interesting number because it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two positive perfect cubes in two different ways.

However, attempting to classify all numbers this way leads to a paradox (strictly speaking, an antinomy of definition). Any hypothetical partition of natural numbers into interesting and dull sets seems to fail. For instance, suppose all the numbers up to 37 are considered interesting, but 38 is not. That very property (38 being the first dull number) could well be considered an interesting fact, and hence 38 is not dull after all. In this way one may argue, using proof by contradiction that each natural number is unable to be the smallest dull number, and so one may declare that all numbers must be interesting. This conclusion contradicts the intuitive notion that the natural numbers are apparently too many for all of them to be subjectively interesting.

List of 12 messages in thread
TopicAuthorDate
resistence measurment using 801 with LCD display            01/01/70 00:00      
   Do you realise what you\'re asking for?            01/01/70 00:00      
      hi russell            01/01/70 00:00      
         No chance            01/01/70 00:00      
            I love it            01/01/70 00:00      
               801            01/01/70 00:00      
                  Have a beer...            01/01/70 00:00      
         impossible            01/01/70 00:00      
   milliohmmeter            01/01/70 00:00      
   What's an 801?            01/01/70 00:00      
   How precise must it be?            01/01/70 00:00      
      too late            01/01/70 00:00      

Back to Subject List