3 ms·
> Like the number of letters in the number being equal to the number of digits in the base ten representation You might not be happy that someone investigated
by schoen 4y ago
> Like the number of letters in the number being equal to the number of digits in the base ten representation
You might not be happy that someone investigated this because you apparently made up this example in order to make fun of this kind of question, but I looked into this a little bit and it's more subtle than I first thought.
The typical random integer small enough to have a well-defined English name (following Guy and Conway's prefixes at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers#Extensions_of_the_standard_dictionary_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers#Extensi... which will go up to 10³⁰⁰⁰-1) has a significantly longer English name than its decimal expansion. E.g. if we take fifty random digits like
96689907044105050355231217362382284051155144740067
the name of this number is "ninetysixquindecillionsixhundredeightyninequattuordecillionninehundredseventredecillionfortyfourduodecilliononehundredfiveundecillionfiftydecillionthreehundredfiftyfivenonilliontwohundredthirtyoneoctilliontwohundredseventeenseptillionthreehundredsixtytwosextillionthreehundredeightytwoquintilliontwohundredeightyfourquadrillionfiftyonetrilliononehundredfiftyfivebilliononehundredfortyfourmillionsevenhundredfortythousandsixtyseven"
or 430 letters, while the number is written with only 50 digits.
For small numbers, the closest approach between the lengths of the two is 10 (len("ten") == 3, len("10") == 2). And the typical word length grows faster than the digit length.
But the lengths do cross over many times up in the illions, as the illion terminology is unusually short compared to the size of the number described. Specifically, the smallest integer where this occurs is 1,000,000,000, where len("onebillion") == len("1000000000"). That's the smallest member of your set.
There are other examples such as 10¹³+1, 10¹³+2, 10¹³+6:
len("tentrillionone") == len("tentrilliontwo") == len("tentrillionsix") == len("10000000000001")
And there are many more further out into the illions.
For any example in which "one", "two", or "six" appears in the name of a number, any of the others can be substituted and the property will still hold. Likewise for "four"-"five"-"nine" and "three"-"seven"-"eight".
- kristopolous 4y agoThanks I'm pretty sure somebody had taken the time. Here's another one for you. Could some uncountable infinities be cardinally smaller than countable infinites if we throw out the property that they must be countable by definition? As in you can say "this is smaller than that, I can demonstrate it's infinite but I can't do a countable demonstration."
- lmm 4y ago> Could some uncountable infinities be cardinally smaller than countable infinites if we throw out the property that they must be countable by definition? As in you can say "this is smaller than that, I can demonstrate it's infinite but I can't do a countable demonstration." No, trivially. If X has a smaller cardinality than Y then there is an injective function from X to Y (by definition), if Y is countable then there is an injective function from Y to the natural numbers (by definition), then by composing those two functions you have an injective function from X to the natural numbers i.e. X is countable.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wrycoder 4y agoI just noticed that there don’t seem to be as many stars out tonight as there usually are.
- kickaha 4y agoI understood that reference! EDIT: the reference https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_Go...