Graham's Number - Numberphile

Numberphile · 3M views · 2012-04-04 · 9:16

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Overview

Numberphile's Tony Padilla and Matt Parker discuss Graham's number, once the largest number used in a mathematical proof, and how enormous it is.

On Hacker News

Recommended as the mind-melting intro to unimaginably large numbers.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2013–2024

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" [VIDEO] "How Big is Graham's Number? (feat Ron Graham)" [LINK] "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]: [VIDEO] [2]: [LINK]
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johnsonjo · 2019-05 · Recommendation
I've seen this notation in a video [1] on Graham's number [2] by Numberphile. It's a pretty interesting video for seeing how quickly the numbers get unimaginably massive. [1]: [VIDEO] [2]: [LINK]
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Sources

Video by Numberphile, played through YouTube.

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