🚀 go-pugleaf

michaelg@julian.uwo.ca (Michael Glenn) wrote:

>What is the largest digit with a name? 

>eg: million, billion, quadrillion, etc...

>Can you also include the numerical value

>eg: 1000 or 100 000  or 1 X 10^4 etc...
>---------------------------------
>Michael Glenn
>The University of Western Ontario
>michaelg@julian.uwo.ca

Looking in my Penguin dictionary of curious and interesting numbers
ref ISBN 0-14-008029-5,  David Wells, 1987 gives the "guiness book of
records largest number" as "Grahams number".

It can't be expressed using normal notation and if all the material in
the universe were turned to pen and ink it would not be enough to
write the number down.    It does have a purpose - as the upper bound
of a solution to a problem in part of combinatorics called Ramsay
Theory.

If 3^3 is 3 cubed = 27

And 3^^3 is 3^(3^3) = 3^27 = 7 625 597 484 987

3^^^3 is 3^^(3^^3) = 3^^(7 625 597 484 987) 
= 3^(7 625 597 484 987^7 625 597 484 987)

Next consider a) the number 3^^^^^^... ^^^3   where there are 3^^^^3
uparrows.  This is pretty big!

Next construct the number 3^^^....^^^3 where the number of uparrows is
the result of a) above.

Next repeat this until yoiu are 63 steps away from 3^^^^3 .

This is Graham's number.


Tony Ibbotson
Southampton UK.





"Knowledge is of two kinds.   We know a subject ourselves or we know
where we can find information upon it"  Dr Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784