NUMB3RS

No, this post isn't about the CBS show. It's just about a mild(?) obsession of mine.

As you might have been able to tell from the last paragraph of this post, I'm somewhat obsessed with numbers. I'm not sure when it started, but I know I was multiplying and dividing while the rest of the kindergartners were learning to add and subtract--I did, however have to ask them to tie my shoes until the summer after that year (and I still only tie my shoes when I buy them, or if they accidentally come untied).

Anyway, lately I've been working on my prime number spreadsheet. I've got all the prime numbers from 2-2999--the first 428 prime numbers--so I can check any number up to 9,000,000 to see if it's prime or not--anything higher, I can only be sure if my spreadsheet says it isn't prime. I do plan to continue working on it, with no foreseeable end.

I've also begun playing a "game" when I get bored. Here's how it works: Pick a number, and find its prime factors--so if it's already prime, the game ends. Take the prime factors and add them together. Continue until you hit a prime number. For example, say I pick the year I was born in, 1986. Its prime factors are 2, 3, and 331. The sum of these is 336. The prime factors of that are 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, and 7. The sum of these is 18, whose prime factors are 2, 3, and 3. The sum of those is 8, which factors to 2, 2, and 2. That sum is 6, which factors to 2 and 3. They total 5, which is prime. (For any that are wondering, I normally do this in my head) Note: 4 breaks the game--factors are 2 and 2, which add up to 4 again--but you can only get 4 if you start with it, so that problem takes care of itself. 1 is also illegal, being neither prime nor a multiple of primes, but nobody (except a real loser) would pick that to start with.

I had another spreadsheet I was working on that figured out the lowest number whose prime factors added up to a prime number--with a certain number of prime factors. When I last worked on that, I was up to 30 factors--or 1,610,612,736 (3 times 2 to the 29th power, which total to 61). I've grown bored with this one, since it doesn't actually take any thinking or work to keep it going--just using formulas on the spreadsheet.

In case you've noticed, one big part of this obsession with numbers is with prime numbers. That's because prime numbers are in what I consider "good numbers". Good numbers are either prime, or whole powers of whole numbers--the power can't be one, that's cheating. Bad numbers are all other whole numbers. I don't normally divide numbers that aren't whole numbers into "good" or "bad", they're just sort of there. Pi has to be my favorite irrational number though, which is why I've memorized it to 40 decimal places--I probably won't go any further, because I don't care to go further. I have been tempted to do the same with e, but that would mean more "useless" memorization.