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At Pomona College, there’s a bit of folklore around a talk a math professor gave in which he “proved” that all numbers are equal to 47.¹ Consequently, students
by dhosek 3y ago
At Pomona College, there’s a bit of folklore around a talk a math professor gave in which he “proved” that all numbers are equal to 47.¹ Consequently, students started noticing 47 everywhere since psychologically, it’s a popular number to choose as a “random” number between 1 and 100,² although some of the coincidences (the number of trees on the quad, the exit number on the 10 to get to Claremont) don’t fit into that schema.
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1. Spoiler: there was a divide by zero in his proof.
2. Why? Because it’s near the middle of the interval and is prime, two things that will happen if you unthinkingly just grab for a number.
- cpeterso 3y agohttps://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/47 https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/47 > The number 47 makes frequent recurrences in dialogues and on computer screens in Star Trek. > The origin of the significance of 47 can be traced to Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager writer Joe Menosky, who attended Pomona College in California. There is a club at Pomona called The 47 Society, which claims that there exists a mathematical proof that all numbers are equal to 47. > Joe Menosky first started including references to 47 in his scripts in the fourth season of TNG, and the in-joke quickly caught on among the rest of the staff. Since then, references to 47 have been included in many episodes and movies of all the modern series.”