How Big is Graham's Number? (feat Ron Graham)

Numberphile · 1.7M views · 2014-07-22 · 8:23

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Overview

Numberphile talks with mathematician Ron Graham about the magnitude of Graham's number, building up from arrow notation to show how impossibly large it is. It is part of a series of videos on this number.

On Hacker News

HN commenters recommend it for hearing Graham himself and for its clear introduction to up-arrow notation and enormous numbers.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2014–2024

Topics

Recreational & visual math Pure mathematics

What people said

jiggawatts · 2024-05 · Strong recommendation
If math can make you feel awe, you've got to watch the Numberphile series on very big numbers. They're constants used in proofs that are specific, well-defined integers known to be finite, but so huge that the physical universe does not have enough particles (or even Plank-scale microstates) in it to represent the number of digits these numbers have! Absolutely mind-bending stuff. Listed in increasing order: "Graham's Number" [LINK] "How Big is Graham's Number? (feat Ron Graham)" [VIDEO] "The Enormous TREE(3)" [LINK] "TREE(3) (extra footage)" [LINK] "The Daddy of Big Numbers (Rayo's Number)" [LINK]
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prezjordan · 2015-02 · Strong recommendation
My brain melts every time I watch this video [1] from Numberphile on Graham's number. They also had another video [2] with Ron Graham himself :) [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]
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prezjordan · 2014-12 · Strong recommendation
Is loglogloglog...log the only beast that can conquer Knuth's arrow notation? (x ↑↑↑↑...↑ n) Every time I watch videos about arrow notation or, more famously, Graham's number, my head explodes :) [VIDEO] Big big numbers are really, really cool!
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Sources

Video by Numberphile, played through YouTube.

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