

What's special about this number? (0-9999) - ottbot
http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/numbers.html

======
joshu
I wonder which one is least special.

~~~
e1ven
Wouldn't that then become a self-fulfilling loop? That number's non-
specialness would be something special about it, so you'd need the next non-
special number, and so on until they were all covered.

~~~
aquadoctorbob
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox>

~~~
mrfish
The people who wrote this entry have too much time on their hands. Hey I must
have to much time on my hands to make this comment about people having too
much time on their hands thus presenting at least a ironic situation and at
most a Time Wasting Paradox.

------
pohl
I noticed most (maybe all) of the links go to wolfram math world. Out of
curiosity, I compared a few entries there against Wikipedia, and I like the
latter a lot better. My sample size was pretty small, though.

------
fbu
9945 = 17!!!!

I can't stop laughing at this one.

~~~
DanHulton
...why?

~~~
aquadoctorbob
Well, in writing -- Internet discourse in particular -- multiple exclamation
marks are occasionally (ab)used to indicate absurd levels of emotional
intensity on the part of the speaker. The factorial operation is also denoted
by an exclamation mark; to someone unfamiliar with that fact, or someone
capable of intentionally conflating the two usages, it appears that the
statement "9945 = 17!!!!" represents someone excitedly asserting a falsehood
(i.e. "9945 = 17") or possibly suggesting that shouting a number somehow
increases its value.

Each line on the linked article is a more-or-less stoic mathematical fact, and
the humor comes from the subversion of this expectation when the entry for
9945 is misinterpreted as I described.

------
mrfish
I thought "42" was the meaning of life?

