NUMBERS IN CULTURE, CULTURE IN NUMBERS:
---MY FAVORITE NUMBERS

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
2006 Annual Conference  
St Louis, Missouri

April 28, 2006 (centennial of the birth of Kurt Gödel) (note: this page has been updated after the presentation)
Session 493, 9:30 - 10:30 am, Washington-C, America's Center (see map-level 1)

Lawrence Shirley Professor of Mathematics and Associate Dean
College of Graduate Studies and Research
Towson University, Towson, Maryland 21252

410-704-3500 or LShirley@towson.edu

This presentation: http://pages.towson.edu/shirley/numbers.htm
Personal webpage: http://pages.towson.edu/shirley

Outline:

Favorite numbers (37 is magic!) 
                        choose a digit d: dx2x3x5x7; divide result by 10; new resultx11x13x37 = dddddd (!)
                            this leads to ideas of repunits and similar numbers                        
                            [maybe ALL numbers are special!]
Pythagoras and numerology (1,2,3,4,5,6, and more)
                            [but we don't believe in that, do we, triskaidekaphobes?]
Ramanujan's number (1729 is the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes two ways)
                            [and other "taxicab" numbers, such as 87539319]
Special numbers in math (what is special about 3010, 4771, 2303, 1732, 2520, ...?)
                            [hint: we need to insert some decimal points]
Update on perfect numbers (6, 28, 496, ...)
                            [news from September 2006: the 44th perfect number!]
Numbers in your culture (3, 7, 16, 21, 24, 26, 40, 144, ...)
                            [which numbers are special to YOU?]
Some examples from world cultures (4, 12, 13, 20, 40,...)
                            [what is special about 38?]
Bonus: License plate numbers! (e.g., FGM-425 and 4AC-L21)
                            Letters can show base system; fun to factor while driving!

(see the references and links for many more examples)

References / Further Reading (note: most titles have hyperlinks to Amazon.com):

--Blocksma, Mary, Necessary Numbers: An Everyday Guide to Sizes, Measures, and More, Advantage Publishers Group, 2002.
--Dudley, Underwood, Numerology--or, What Pythagoras Wrought, Mathematical Association of America, 1997.
--Guedj, Denis, Numbers: The Universal Language, Harry N Abrams, Inc., 1997
--Ifrah, Georges, The Universal History of Numbers, Wiley, 1994.
--Siefe, Charles, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Penguin Books, 2000.
--Shirley, Lawrence, "Nominals: Numbers as Names" Teaching Children Mathematics, 2,4 (December 1995) pp.242-45.
--Zaslavsky, Claudia Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Culture, Lawrence Hill Books, 1973, 1999.

Links:

--Special numbers (individual) and types of special numbers (from MathWorld)
--MathWorld's references: Small Numbers (special numbers up to a few thousand) and Large Numbers (giants)
--BIG numbers by counting pennies (Also, follow the links at the end for terminology and more sense of BIG numbers)
--a suggestion for names for big numbers
--a great index of terms for sizes, units, time, numbers, etc.
-- primes, Mersenne primes, and perfect numbers (and how YOU can join the search)
--find prime factorizations (of individual integers or strings of integers)
--Biographies of historical mathematicians (over 1700 names!) and other topics....
----including Pythagoras,  Hardy,  Ramanujan,  Erdös and hundreds more!
--You can find words for one to ten in over 5000 languages(!) here.
--Information on Roman numerals
--Dollar word checking and examples
--repunits (1,11,111,1111, etc.) and related ideas
--On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences

[a little removed from the theme of this presentation, but interesting: Fibonacci poetry!]

[and....from National Public Radio's "This I Believe": Numbers Don't Lie]

A modified (but similar) presentation of this topic titled "Numbers without Limits: A Multicultural View" was made at the Maryland Council of Teachers of Mathematics Annual Conference in Owings Mills, Maryland on October 21, 2005.  To see the current page in full, go to the top

A later, related presentation: "Number Words"; (MCTM, 2007)

This page was updated on 21 September 2007; links checked 12 June 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

note: this year, 2006 = 2 x 17 x 59 (interesting factors!)

note: my ZIP code, 21252 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 7 x 11 x 23 (very nice factors!)

note: my phone number, 4107043500 = 2^2 x 3 x 5^2 x 7 x 599 x 653 (not very nice factors!)

note: session number 493 = 17 x 29 (or 23^2 - 6^2) an unexpected composite number (it looks prime)