Another year, another factorisation. This time, it’s 2 • 3 • 5 • 67. This year is the first in a long time in which all the factors are rather small.
Can’t wait until next year, though: 2011 is a prime number, the first since 2003.
Posts Tagged ‘maths’
Happy 2 • 3 • 5 • 67
Monday, January 4th, 2010Don't You? Don't You?
Friday, January 2nd, 2009The first time I heard Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain,’ I had a brain fart. This was bad, because it occured on Mopac at 70 mph. Luckily I survived, but the song’s refrain still caused a logic exception in my head every time I considered it:
You’re so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain
I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? Don’t you?
I even lost a little sleep thinking about it last night. The wording is odd, and combined with its vague context—Simon still refuses to say who her douchebag ex is—potentially disastrous. After a little analysis, I have reached the conclusion that Carly Simon has inhuman sluttish abilities. Work with me on this.
Until the song’s ‘you’ is defined, I am free to consider every person living in 1973 p capable of being the song’s target (set P). Naturally, I’m not saying she banged everyone on Earth in 1973. ((Probably close. Mom?)) To whittle down the size of P, apply the song logically to every potential p ∈ P. In other words, a Cinderella glass slipper-type scenario. What she is saying is ‘If your vanity is sufficiently large, you think this song is about you.’ ((I had to drop ‘probably,’ because that’s a matter of statistics: what percentage of vain people live in a self-obsessed fantasy world where Carly Simon wrote a song about them?)) Broken down even further, ‘For every p, if p’s vanity v > some arbitrary constant k, then p ∈ P.’
It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that P is a very large set. As in, untold millions of people. Carly Simon is confessing over oldies radio that she made out with entire cities, states, regions. She is either a) a boasting hussy or b) not a logician. I’ll be nice and assume the latter, in which case I’ll help her out.
Her goof is surprisingly petty and easily corrected: cause and effect are swapped. This is why I noted the song’s wording is disastrous. With a simple rearrangement of phrases, all is well. Um, until you try to sing it.
If you think this song is about you
You’re so vain
If you think this song is about you
You’re so vain
Do you? Do you?
Instead of saying every vain person in 1973 thinks they have a song dedicated to them, the lyrics simply claim that every person in 1973 who thinks the song is about them is vain. That’s a fair statement, even applied to any other song. What would you say to a person that boasted that Nine Inch Nails had him in mind when they did ‘Closer’?
Happy 7^2 * 41
Thursday, January 1st, 2009Another year, another factor. 2009 is 72 * 41, which is pleasantly compact. Unlike 2008. Maybe compactness is proportional to a year’s quality?
At a friend’s party, I botched my operands and reported it as 7 * 241, which would be the year 15.3 trillion, give or take a few hundred million years.
Freudenschade
Friday, December 12th, 2008I’ve taken an unfortunate scapegoat approach to pinpointing romantic shortfalls. Common sense indicates that I am single because I’m the one in control. It’s much easier, though, to blame everyone else, and I do that to an astonishing degree. Facebook indicates you have a new flame? You’re holding hands on the street? You’re walking slightly abreast of someone of the opposite sex? Then you are the cause of everything that makes me miserable, and I will secretly want to take an axe to your face in lieu of leaving my apartment and meeting people. Count on it. Good lord, I’m a cranky 70 year-old 45 years too early.
Unlike schadenfreude—’taking pleasure in the misery of others,’ literally ‘pain pleasure’ in German—there is no word to describe this sensation. Jealousy or envy doesn’t quite cover it, as there is no sense of misery and too much sense of covetousness. The nameless phenomenon is an odd absence in English.
I propose, then, what is essentially (schadenfreude)-1: freudenschade, ‘finding misery in the pleasure of others.’ ((This probably means the body of English words is not an abelian group: commutivity of multiplication is violated.)) I know you feel it; why not speak it now, too?
Cutthroat Business
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008I hate shaving. It’s socially encouraged facial mutilation for the 99% of people that don’t put time, money, and labourious effort into a proper shave. I taught myself how to do it rather than accept my father’s offer to teach me—confessing that I had gone through puberty was too much for me to bear at the time, perhaps. Given a sharp piece of metal and no prior knowledge of the craft, I wasn’t very good at it then and I’m still not now.
When I started looking into improving my tactics, I realised shaving and my sophomore math teacher had a common trait: I don’t just hate it, I love hating it. By investing in a razor that is 30+ years old and studying ways not to gouge my face, I was making the game of defying defeat enjoyable. And, as with sophomore math, the process worked.
Soon, for the ultimate high, I plan to shave my math teacher and not fail with respect to both parties. That may not be a good idea so soon after seeing Sweeney Todd, though…
Happy 23 • 251
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008Adhering again to unwavering tradition, I’ve factored 2008 for you. Savour the high exponent featured this year. You won’t get to see another moderately interesting factorisation for…awhile. Hell, you think I’m going to sit up all night with a calculator and notepaper? See you in 2048 (211)!
Animath
Friday, December 28th, 2007A friend identified a print error identifying 17913 A.D. as the year Marie Antoinette was beheaded. It must be a typo, he noted, because likely there will be no such person named that almost 11,600 years into the future. The truth of that is hard to deny. Still, I suggested the opposite is true with regards to prior fiction. Deep down I know that somewhere, somehow, there is a mecha anime series that combines the Earth of 17913 A.D. with a futuristic heroine named Marie Antoinette. Think Firefly meets Xenogears.
The volume of animated content Japan churns out every year makes this series’ existence reasonable. Indeed, the Japanese are so accomplished in their art that I would just as well expect an anime for any tangible object in any conceivable future. To put this closer to terms that can be published in the Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra,
For any time T and object X such that (for present time T0) T – T0 > 0 and X is in T, there exists an anime A.
(See also: Rule 34 of the Internet.)
26476600101 · 2333333 – 1
Saturday, November 17th, 2007I am now the proud owner of the 4,127th largest prime known to mankind. It weighs in at 100,354 digits. I use my computer to process PrimeGrid work, and yesterday morning I got an unusually chipper e-mail:
Dear Primefinder,
Congratulations! Our records indicate that a computer registered by you has
found a unique prime number. This computer is running BOINC, is attached to
the PrimeGrid project, and is assigned to the Twin Prime Search. What makes
this prime unique is that it’s large enough to enter the Top 5000 List in
The Largest Known Primes Database.
Dandy. So much work is being done on this project, though, that this number will be bumped off the top 5000 list in 12 weeks. Indeed, in the 12 hour span between page visits, my number plummeted three spots. It’s a cutthroat industry, these prime number sweatshops!