2: a prime number, but also even. How beautiful!
pi: every maths fanatic's favourite? It's irrationality is a wonderful mystery.
49: my favourite square number. Recently my students laughed at me when I asked them to write a limerick about their favourite square number. What's so funny about that?
phi: the golden ratio. This lovely ratio of [1+rt(5)]/2 describes the most beautiful architecture and most pleasing forms. Astoundingly it crops up in the Fibonacci numbers as well as the ratio between consecutive terms as the sequence progresses.
e: an irrational number that has on its list of claiims to fame the equation e^(pi*i) = -1, an equation that my high school maths teacher said was proof God existed.
For bragging rights, match the numbers mentioned above with thier decimal equivalents:
1.61803...
2.71828...
3.14159...
2 comments:
Which got me thinking, Googling, and being startled by all the ways the golden ratio shows up. See:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoldenRatio.html
Of course, then there's 1729, and the king of all numbers, 42. And 163 (or at least the square root of its negative) is interesting in some contexts too.
- Ross
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