Back مفارقة العدد المثير للاهتمام Arabic Paradoxa dels nombres interessants Catalan Interessante-tal-paradokset Danish Interessante-Zahlen-Paradoxon German Παράδοξο του ενδιαφέροντος αριθμού Greek Paradoja de los números interesantes Spanish Paradoxe des nombres intéressants French פרדוקס המספרים המעניינים HE 面白い数のパラドックス Japanese 흥미로운 숫자 역설 Korean
The interesting number paradox is a humorous paradox which arises from the attempt to classify every natural number as either "interesting" or "uninteresting". The paradox states that every natural number is interesting.[1] The "proof" is by contradiction: if there exists a non-empty set of uninteresting natural numbers, there would be a smallest uninteresting number – but the smallest uninteresting number is itself interesting because it is the smallest uninteresting number, thus producing a contradiction.
"Interestingness" concerning numbers is not a formal concept in normal terms, but an innate notion of "interestingness" seems to run among some number theorists. Famously, in a discussion between the mathematicians G. H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan about interesting and uninteresting numbers, Hardy remarked that the number 1729 of the taxicab he had ridden seemed "rather a dull one", and Ramanujan immediately answered that it is interesting, being the smallest number that is the sum of two cubes in two different ways.[2][3]
- ^ Gardner, Martin (January 1958). "A collection of tantalizing fallacies of mathematics". Mathematical games. Scientific American. 198 (1): 92–97. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0158-92. JSTOR 24942039.
- ^ Singh, Simon (15 October 2013). "Why is the number 1,729 hidden in Futurama episodes?". BBC News Online. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
- ^ Baez, John C. (2022-02-28). "Hardy, Ramanujan and Taxi No. 1729". The n-Category Café. Retrieved 2022-10-14.