Numbers with personality

• Consider the so-called Hardy-Ramanujan number 1729, and the story of Taxicab Numbers, retold on Wolfram Mathworld at the link above. Hardy is quoted as saying of Ramanujan that "each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends". What do you make of this in terms of Major's paper?

 

In this story , when the number first came into his mind he thought of it as a rather dull number, adding that he hoped that wasn't a bad omen. However, as he thought about it, he found that “it is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways" . In the paper, it is stated that each number has its own personality and people give them associations with good/bad fortune, heavy/light senses. Also, different numbers stimulate activity in a different area in the brain. So there’s biological reasons associated with our feelings about the numbers as well.

For Ramanujan, probably he just had some different arrangements in his brain that after he thought a bit about this number, he figured out the beauty behind it. Partly due to his long practice of being a mathematician, partly due to his sensitivity with regards to numbers. However, he must also have a personal feeling/relationship with the numbers.  AS Hardy said , "each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends". He must be looking at each number , welcoming them in his room, either good or bad, and then thinking about them, making connections, so that eventually , he would figure out the true personality/value of the number. This is quite an interesting way of thinking.

 

• Is this something that you might want to introduce to your secondary math students? Why or why not? If you would use these ideas in your math class, how might you do so?

It could be something that I introduce to them, but just for an interesting activity. This could be a group discussion, or an activity aimed at exploring mathematical concepts and how it connects to our daily life. I think they have some superstitious notions, so I might not impose too much of it on the students. Maybe just as a fun activity to start up the class and get them thinking about it.

 

• Do numbers have particular personalities for you? Why, how, or why not? What about letters of the alphabet, days of the week, months of the year, etc.?

 

They do sometimes. Maybe just for superstitious reasons. For Chinese definitely 4 is bad and 8 or 6 is good. Also we have a lucky number in our family.  But that is all.