What concepts or facts do you know from math that is mind blowing, awesome, or simply fascinating?

Here are some I would like to share:

  • Gödel’s incompleteness theorems: There are some problems in math so difficult that it can never be solved no matter how much time you put into it.
  • Halting problem: It is impossible to write a program that can figure out whether or not any input program loops forever or finishes running. (Undecidablity)

The Busy Beaver function

Now this is the mind blowing one. What is the largest non-infinite number you know? Graham’s Number? TREE(3)? TREE(TREE(3))? This one will beat it easily.

  • The Busy Beaver function produces the fastest growing number that is theoretically possible. These numbers are so large we don’t even know if you can compute the function to get the value even with an infinitely powerful PC.
  • In fact, just the mere act of being able to compute the value would mean solving the hardest problems in mathematics.
  • Σ(1) = 1
  • Σ(4) = 13
  • Σ(6) > 101010101010101010101010101010 (10s are stacked on each other)
  • Σ(17) > Graham’s Number
  • Σ(27) If you can compute this function the Goldbach conjecture is false.
  • Σ(744) If you can compute this function the Riemann hypothesis is false.

Sources:

  • Artisian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    For the uninitiated, the monty Hall problem is a good one.

    Start with 3 closed doors, and an announcer who knows what’s behind each. The announcer says that behind 2 of the doors is a goat, and behind the third door is a car student debt relief, but doesn’t tell you which door leads to which. They then let you pick a door, and you will get what’s behind the door. Before you open it, they open a different door than your choice and reveal a goat. Then the announcer says you are allowed to change your choice.

    So should you switch?

    The answer turns out to be yes. 2/3rds of the time you are better off switching. But even famous mathematicians didn’t believe it at first.

  • Gogo Sempai@programming.dev
    1·
    3 years ago

    Goldbach’s Conjecture: Every even natural number > 2 is a sum of 2 prime numbers. Eg: 8=5+3, 20=13+7.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach’s_conjecture

    Such a simple construct right? Notice the word “conjecture”. The above has been verified till 4x10^18 numbers BUT no one has been able to prove it mathematically till date! It’s one of the best known unsolved problems in mathematics.

  • mookulator@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    The four-color theorem is pretty cool.

    You can take any map of anything and color it in using only four colors so that no adjacent “countries” are the same color. Often it can be done with three!

    Maybe not the most mind blowing but it’s neat.

    • cll7793@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      3 years ago

      Thanks for the comment! It is cool and also pretty aesthetically pleasing!

  • Nfamwap@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    11 X 11 = 121

    111 X 111 = 12321

    1111 X 1111 = 1234321

    11111 X 11111 = 123454321

    111111 X 1111111 = 12345654321

  • timeisart@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    Multiply 9 times any number and it always “reduces” back down to 9 (add up the individual numbers in the result)

    For example: 9 x 872 = 7848, so you take 7848 and split it into 7 + 8 + 4 + 8 = 27, then do it again 2 + 7 = 9 and we’re back to 9

    It can be a huge number and it still works:

    9 x 987345734 = 8886111606

    8+8+8+6+1+1+1+6+0+6 = 45

    4+5 = 9

    Also here’s a cool video about some more mind blowing math facts

  • aggelalex@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    The Fourier series. Musicians may not know about it, but everything music related, even harmony, boils down to this.

  • _pheel_@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    There are more ways to arrange a deck of 52 cards than there are atoms on Earth.

    52 Factorial

    I feel this one is quite well known, but it’s still pretty cool.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 years ago

    I heard that Pythagoras killed a man on a fishing trip because he solved a problem first.

    That’s a pretty wild math tale!

  • betheydocrime@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 years ago

    For me, personally, it’s the divisible-by-three check. You know, the little shortcut you can do where you add up the individual digits of a number and if the resulting sum is divisible by three, then so is the original number.

    That, to me, is black magic fuckery. Much like everything else in this thread I have no idea how it works, but unlike everything else in this thread it’s actually a handy trick that I use semifrequently

    • JonC@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      3 years ago

      That one’s actually really easy to prove numerically.

      Not going to type out a full proof here, but here’s an example.

      Let’s look at a two digit number for simplicity. You can write any two digit number as 10*a+b, where a and b are the first and second digits respectively.

      E.g. 72 is 10 * 7 + 2. And 10 is just 9+1, so in this case it becomes 72=(9 * 7)+7+2

      We know 9 * 7 is divisible by 3 as it’s just 3 * 3 * 7. Then if the number we add on (7 and 2) also sum to a multiple of 3, then we know the entire number is a multiple of 3.

      You can then extend that to larger numbers as 100 is 99+1 and 99 is divisible by 3, and so on.