Counting - discussion thread

[jamesthegill]

Maybe someone's waiting until 22:18 tonight to combine Tumbleweed and Counting and claim 591 bells, thus winning both threads and usurping Tubeguru as our lord and master?

[GuyBarry]

Maybe someone's waiting until 22:18 tonight to combine Tumbleweed and Counting and claim 591 bells, thus winning both threads and usurping Tubeguru as our lord and master?

I'm sure that's really clever but I can't work it out. What happened at 07:18 on 18th July?

The smart time for a Tumbleweed-like post would have been 06:54 yesterday morning.

[GuyBarry]

The number 593 is even more interesting, viz:

It is what is known as a "Good prime", or a prime whose square is greater than the product of its neighbouring two primes.

That's true, but it seems that the criteria for being a "good prime" are stricter than that. Wikipedia says: "A good prime is a prime number whose square is greater than the product of any two primes at the same number of positions before and after it in the sequence of primes."

So it's got to be greater than the product of the prime one before it and one after it, but also two before it and two after it and so on. This is the start of the list of good primes - there are infinitely many of them.

Dropping any number of digits from the right-hand side of the number (to create 59 and 5) always results in a prime number.

Those are called "right-truncatable primes", or sometimes just "right primes".

[GuyBarry]

A601(M), the southern section of which is a rare piece of motorway that is just a single lane each way (with no central crash barrier either)!

Indeed. Another curious thing about the A601(M) is that it's about 130 miles away from the A601, which is the Derby Inner Ring Road. This appears to be another cock-up analogous to that of the A594, previously mentioned.

[tractakid]

A601(M), the southern section of which is a rare piece of motorway that is just a single lane each way (with no central crash barrier either)!

Indeed. Another curious thing about the A601(M) is that it's about 130 miles away from the A601, which is the Derby Inner Ring Road. This appears to be another cock-up analogous to that of the A594, previously mentioned.

I wanted this fact, but I've been busy farting.

[GuyBarry]

I wanted this fact, but I've been busy farting.

Bad luck. The next duplicated road number is the A1042 so you've a little while to wait

Hope things are going well. I like to think of the counting game as a more sedate version of the FART - the Frantic* Attempt to Reach a Thousand.

*Or Fearless, or Futile, depending on your point of view.

[GuyBarry]

609 is a number that can be written upside down and still read the same number. The next example of this numerically is 808

How about 619?

[The Raven]

True

[GuyBarry]

All right, what about 689 then?

[tubeguru]

1 has that little slanty bit on the top tbh, so I am with The Raven's original assertion. Look:

1

Depends which font you write it in.

[DrainBrain]

Depends which font you write it in.

Yup. 629 and 659 would both work on some calculators, for example.

[Garion]

Bad luck. The next duplicated road number is the A1042 so you've a little while to wait

Dont you mean the A4102? There's one ni Merthyr Tydfyl (where I used to live) and Amblecote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_roads_in ... ing_scheme

There is only A1042 in the country, nowhere near either A4102 (nor in the same road zone).

[GuyBarry]

According to SABRE (the Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts and the fount of all knowledge on these things), there's an A1042 on Teesside and a different A1042 in Norwich. A list of all known duplicated road numbers is here.

Interesting that both A1042 and A4102 should appear on the list - the only two to be anagrams of each other.

[Garion]

I guess Wikipedia needs editing :p

[GuyBarry]

WWE star Ray Mysterio has a finishing move known as a 619.

(I have no idea what that actually means.)

I had no idea either so I looked it up. It's also known as the "tiger feint kick" and is described here:

"The tiger feint kick is a move in which a wrestler jumps through the second and top rope while holding on to the ropes, and uses the momentum to swing back around into the ring, and was originally performed as a fake dive to make opponents and fans think that the wrestler was about to dive through the ropes to opponents outside the ring. This move requires high agility and is mainly used by smaller wrestlers in Japan and Mexico."

There's also a photo of Rey Mysterio performing the move. I've yet to find out the reason for the "619" name.