Zorac (zorac) wrote,
Zorac
zorac

Playing with numbers...

I was idly playing with numbers in my head the other day, something to occupy my mind while I trudged back from Sainsbury's with a load of shopping. In particular, I was looking at number sequences (you know, what number comes next - 1, 3, 5, 7, ? or 1, 4, 9, 16, ?) and came up with the following (related, but calculated in opposite ways):

1 ... 4 ... 19,683 ... ?
1 ... 4 ... 7,625,597,484,987 ... ?

The answer to the first series is a mere
340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
The second, as you can probably guess, is larger. Much larger. In fact, it's exactly
226,815,615,859,885,194,199,148,049,996,411,692,254,958,731,641,184,786,755,447,122,887,443,528,060,147,093,953,603,748,596,333,806,855,380,063,716,372,972,101,707,507,765,623,893,139,892,867,298,012,168,192
or approximately
5 x 108,072,304,726,028,225,379,282,369,632,412,842,737,810,037,345,818,396,835,407,833,195,922,269,447,488,939,454,873,506,883,657,604,175,736,107,203,603,983,535,115,431,016,379,958,411,831,793,261,615,652,260
Even more approximately, that's
5 x 108 x 10153
Time to play with some big numbers:
5 x 10googol x 8 x 1053
5 x googolplex8,000 x 1050
5 x googolplex8,000 √googol

However I put it, that is one very big number, almost impossible to visualise - Asimov's essay Skewered! details just how hard to visualise big numbers can be. Final challenge, if you want to prove that you actually solved the puzzle: explain how the series was derived.
Tags: geekery
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  • 19 comments
...go 2 levels up... Expand

jiggery_pokery

September 5 2003, 13:58:28 UTC 17 years ago

Playing about a bit, I think that the second one is what we both identified for the first (1, 22, 333, 4444) and that the first one is the slightly more sane 11, 221, 3321, 44321.

Go go Google Calculator!

jiggery_pokery

September 5 2003, 14:00:20 UTC 17 years ago

...or maybe not.

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