Huge numbers : a story of counting ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7 / Richard Elwes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elwes, Richard, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Number theory--Popular works.

Number theory.

Mathematics--Philosophy--Popular works.

Mathematics.

Information technology--Mathematical models.

Information technology.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

vi, 349 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Story of counting ambitiously, from four and a half to Fish seven

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Basic Books, 2026.

Summary:

"How humanity’s long pursuit of ever-larger numbers broke the boundaries of mathematics and propelled us into the Information Age. What if, every time you wanted to write down 1,000,000, you had to draw a picture of a god? And what if that number were the biggest you had a symbol for? If you were doing math in ancient Egypt, those were the rules: anything bigger broke math. As mathematician Richard Elwes shows in Huge Numbers, this is the strange story of math. Even today, writing down some numbers is beyond us: try it with all the zeroes in a googolplex, or an outrageous alien number like TREE(3). Safer not to try: even harnessing every particle in the universe, you wouldn’t come close. But this book is no mere bestiary of numerical monsters. It shows how, by hunting down and studying ever-bigger numbers, arithmetic has reshaped human thought and made our modern era of science and computation possible. Where many math books celebrate abstract algebra or ineffable infinities, Huge Numbers is both more practical and far weirder. It reveals a world where most numbers remain out of reach until we discover how to chase them down and tame them, and so remake our world again." -- Publisher's description.

Contents:

Part 1. Giants of the ancient world. 4 1/2 numbers on the mind - animal arithmetic ; Meemee wemb: counting out loud - the language of numbers ; The number of the sand: running out of numbres - limited numeral systems ; 28 octillion years BCE: place value and the lure of the large ; A square untold: the magical numbers of India

Part 2. The numbers of the universe. One milli-millimillillion: exponential growth - getting bigger faster ; 93 billion light years: from top to bottom ; 10^10^10^56 years: from beginning to end ; A goolgolplex games of go: impossible numbers of possibilities

Part 3. Beyond the human horizon. Graham's number: towers of powers

Goodstein nineteen: giants in the gaps - logic and language ; Subcubic graph number 3: logical Leviathans ; The busiest beaver: from big data to infinite data

Conclusion. The return of the oracle? Future-proofing mathematics.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1541605926

9781541605923

OCLC:

1531081988

Publisher Number:

90104535540