• Mohamed@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Here’s a nerdy math way.

    Assume that some numbers are not interesting. Let n be the smallest non-interesting number. Since n is the smallest number that’s not interesting, it is interesting.

    • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 day ago

      This is why this only applies to people if you have a number assigned to each person that increases by 1 for each person.

      In theory such a number could exist, but it doesn’t now, so I’m afraid that little girl is actually not special interesting. 😉

  • four@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    What if I think that all of the numbers are uninteresting? Does that make them all interesting? But doesn’t that, in turn, make all of them uninteresting?

  • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    1730 seems pretty uninteresting to me, and that hasn’t changed after taking a few minutes to check if there’s anything that makes it less than dull.

      • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        So, I picked it by choosing 12^3 + 2. I wanted to start with something easily factored (power of 12) and not too small, but not interesting because of its factorization. And I wanted it to be even, since odd numbers tend to have funny quirks. So a simple +2.

        What’s amusing is that I did this before looking at the Wikipedia page. According to that, the original number that inspired this paradox was 1729. So just by happenstance, I picked one integer higher than the original “uninteresting” number. Which I guess arguably makes 1730 interesting now (though admittedly not for mathematical reasons).

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    “Noteworthy” and “interesting” aren’t synonyms.

    Gad, you’ve got me doing it!

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    the interestingness of numbers is a field that fulfills Laplace’s equation, with the constraint that 0 is infinitely interesting, and the interestingness converges to zero for n -> infinity.

    • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Four is bad luck in Japanese superstition, because its pronunciation (‘shi’) is the same as the word for ‘death’.

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    But if 2 numbers arent interesting, they wont become interesting from not being interesting because there are multiple of them