What qualities make a number beautiful?
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Replying to @WriterobinRS
Ah, now this is something I may be able to convey best with a picture. Take a look at this number, for example.pic.twitter.com/NNNbnJodbE
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
This is a beautiful, classical number. Pierre de Fermat, one of the first great students of number, was enchanted by it.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
Most people never realize that this number has this fascinating, multifaceted, 7-based structure. They know it only as 400.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
But to refer to this marvelous creature merely as 400 is to miss all its meaning and magic and poetry. No real mathematician would do this.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
It takes specialized training and extensive experience to recognize the beauty in its conventional representation, as 7^0 + 7^1 + 7^2 + 7^3.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
It is easier to see it in the picture I have shown you. But symbolic representations are powerful. Just as written language is powerful.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
No symbolic representations are needed, though, to appreciate the wonder of this number, which, like the best words, has multiple meanings.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
And indeed some of the meaning in a number may be best appreciated by "seeing it," rather than by representing it by symbols of any kind.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @WriterobinRS
Some of the meaning of a word comes from its sound when pronounced -- and some of the meaning in a number comes from its visible "shape."
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Which is to say that a sort of mathematical onomatopoeia exists, and is a key part of the magic of expression in this domain of thought.
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