Ask HN: What's your favorite number, and why?
8 points
5 hours ago
| 15 comments
| HN
Bender
5 hours ago
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All of the Sacred Geometry numbers, mostly because they should up in computing just as much as they show up in Geometry, Astronomy and overall in nature.

Also 45,000,000,000 because [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J9MRYJz9-4 [video][1min]

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mikewarot
3 hours ago
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τ - Tau, of course. It's the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius.

Pi is tainted by my home state of Indiana's attempts to legislate its value.

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iExploder
5 hours ago
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the coolest number ever - 1337. Approximate melting point of gold in kelvins.
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Imustaskforhelp
3 hours ago
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1337 immediately reminds me of 1337x.to which is a piracy website :)

Looks like the word means LEET or (Elite) within BBS forums (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet) [I had wondered about why 1337x.to team named itself this and then asked AI to then get the reference and then searched it again on wikipedia to get to know more information/confirm it, saying this because I didn't know about this reference till today as I wasn't part of that era.]

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WorldPeas
5 hours ago
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4 is a good number, but I can't explain why, just feels right
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Cheese48923846
5 hours ago
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tab width = 3

It's big enough to clearly see indents. But small enough to preserve screen real estate. And no one needs to agree 3 is best because TAB.

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mhrmsn
4 hours ago
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4, because it can be written as 2+2, 2*2, 2^2, and all the other following hyperoperations Hn(2,2)
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ljf
5 hours ago
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13, as someone who struggled with their timetables, 13 felt like the verge of wild complex maths
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yen223
4 hours ago
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91, which to me is a prime number no matter what the maths say
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andyjohnson0
5 hours ago
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27 is a pretty cool number.
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grahammccain
5 hours ago
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3. It was my first soccer jersey number.
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byoung2
5 hours ago
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3...an odd choice, I know
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al_borland
2 hours ago
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3 is the magic number.

https://youtu.be/J8lRKCw2_Pk

This is the only Schoolhouse Rock I clearly remember and how I can effortlessly count by 3s.

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Jeremy1026
1 hour ago
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Blind Melon has a fantastic cover of it too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVfe6rdHRKI
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ljf
5 hours ago
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So far, 3 is the most popular!
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tim-tday
5 hours ago
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I like 6, maybe 7.

I find that can devalue the enjoyment kids get from their inside joke simply by being one of the olds liking their new favorite number(s).

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Imustaskforhelp
3 hours ago
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2, you can find all odd and even numbers with its shenanigans and the binary system being base 2.

It's also somewhat of my fascination with silver, being second. I remember this feeling when I was in 5th class or something and me and my friends were talking about lets race to the door and see who gets first.

I don't even know why I remember this but I do but And we were three friends/classmates and I was just thinking, man I am happy being second. I really don't want gold, I am happy with silver medal :)

If I think about it nowadays, I think that it sort of means that I am happy with being the second-best, I don't have an "obsession" with being the best (1) within the short-term that it might impact my chances long-term in things.

I also don't like too-much drama within my life, so I am happy if that drama can get redirected to 1 while I can hopefully try to do my things with patience.

Also, I have made too many is-odd/is-even projects within multiple languages ;)

I also like 25/5, I don't know how to explain this but there is a way to write the exponents of 5^n exponentially

so 5^3=125

5^4=((1 × 5)+1)_25 = 625

5^5= ((6 × 5)+1)_25 = 3125

5^6=((31 × 5)+1)_25= 15625

5^7=((156 × 5)+1)_25 = 78125

I don't know I was just playing with numbers until I kind of hit this thing

As you can see that there is a bit of recursion, you can actually create a formula of 5^n as far as I can tell but I have forgotten the formula

Actually this also has something to do with 2 in the derivations to find it, as 10/2=5 ;)

I wanted to find a ways to code exponents quickly, I tried doing it with any other number but I was unable to do that.

I am not sure what this is called though or if I have discovered something new, It was a trick that I only shared once with my classmates. Nothing too big kinda.

Maybe some mathematician can chime in here ;) if there is a more mathematical term to what I have found or if what I have found is even new [I extremely doubt it but hey who knows ;) ]

Either way I was proud of myself for what I had discovered and I also had told my mom about it iirc :]

(Anecdotally I also tried discovering the sum of n numbers accidentally when I was in 6th class by trying to sum the odd numbers as even + 1 and even as 2 × ( sequence themselves but with half the numbers), maybe a bit of recursion itself until I stumbled on the n (n+1)/2, later I found that gauss had also done something similar maybe even around the same age but I can't even compare myself to the legend that gauss is, but still once again, proud of this too)

I still kind of remember using pencil if I remember correctly for this thing as pens were still new to me back then.

Also the explaination of then later the triangle n (n+1) / 2 genuinely felt so intuitive later because of these attempts by me.

> Actually this also has something to do with 2 in the derivations to find it, as 10/2=5 ;)

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fuzzfactor
4 hours ago
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I like zero because it's not easy for everybody to put their finger on.

In some cases you can't even be sure if it's there or not ;)

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oxfordreno
5 hours ago
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7
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gib444
3 hours ago
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That's Numberwang!
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