Notable Properties of Specific Numbers
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The smallest (positive) integer whose name (in English) has the five vowels A,E,I,O,U in any order: "OnE thoUsAnd (and) fIve". When answering problems like this we don't count the letters in "and" because not all people agree on when to include an "and". See also 34, 84, 1025, 1084, 5000, and 1000000000008020.
According to my classical sequence generator, 1011 is the next number after my "favourite" numbers 3, 7, 27 and 143. The formula it finds is: A0 = -1; AN+1 = (2N-1)(AN+1) + 3 (sequence MCS8041809, with its own whimsical page here). Along with its successor 9111, the terms in the sequence share common factors and other properties with 3, 7, 27 and 143. This serves as an example of how easy it is to find a sequence formula to match an arbitrary set of numbers. See also 695, 715, and 1011.
The number of ways to form a set of yes-or-no questions that can be used in a "20 questions"-like game where the questioner knows that the item to be guessed is one of a specific pre-defined set of 8 items. For 8 items you always need at least 3 questions and might need as many as 7. This problem is the subject of OEIS sequence A5646, and I have written a thorough discussion of it here.
(the SI Kibi- prefix)
This is 210, and it's pretty close to 1000=103. As a result, and because of the long-established habit of grouping digits in threes (see 1000), the computer industry has adopted the international prefixes kilo, mega, etc. to refer to quantities that are actually powers of 1024 almost as if they were actually powers of 1000. This sometimes causes practical problems and confusion which can be avoided by using the official prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi, etc. (There is a table here and more about SI prefixes here.)
If for some reason you decide to learn the powers of 2, the closeness of 1024 and 1000 makes it a little easier. It's also handy that 1024 is the 10th power of 2 since 10 is the base of our number system, so (for example) 27, 217, 227, 237 and so on all start with roughly the same digits. Here is a table of powers of 2:
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Given the importance of the powers of 2 for such things as the size of the memory chips in your computer, it's actually pretty cool that we have this coincidental closeness to a power of 10, and a popular power of 10 to boot. It didn't have to be that way. The only other powers of numbers that come anywhere close to a power of 10 are things like 223=10648 and 3162=99856, and those aren't too useful because there isn't much in real life that involves powers of 22 or 316.
The smallest (positive) integer whose name (in English) has the vowels A,E,I,O,U, plus Y, in any order: "OnE thoUsAnd (and) twentY-fIve". When answering problems like this we don't count the letters in "and" because not all people agree on when to include an "and". See also 34, 84, 1005, 1084, 5000, and 1000000000008020.
1080 = 27×40 = 15×72 = 23×33×5 = 20×19×18/1×2×3
A fairly highly-composite number (but not a record-setter) which appears as a unit of division in the Talmudic Hebrew time system. See also 108.
The smallest (positive) integer whose name (in English) has the five vowels A,E,I,O,U, in order: "one thousAnd (and) EIghty-fOUr". When answering problems like this we don't count the letters in "and" because not all people agree on when to include an "and". See also 34, 84, 1005, 1025, 5000, and 1000000000008020.
9×1089 = 9801, which is 1089 in reverse.
Also, if you take any 3-digit number that is not the same in reverse (e.g. 143), take the difference between it and its reversal (341-143=198) then add that to its reversal (198+981) you always get 1089. Before this fact became well-known, it was often untilised by magicians as a "forcing" or "Macigian's choice" technique, to take a number freely chosen by a spectator and make it fit the requirements of an illusion.
1089 is close approximation to the redshift of the cosmic microwave background radiation
See also 8712.
The first of the Wieferich primes, which are the primes p such that p2 divides 2(p-1) - 1. Only two are known (OEIS sequence A1220), the other being 3511, and a next one, if any, must be greater than 4.97×1017.
The following is from a posting to the Math Fun mailing list by R. W. Gosper, 2009 Dec 03:
Subject: I just reordered checks. Banker: Where would you like the numbering to start? rwg: What was my last one? Banker: 1093 rwg: Well then obviously 3511. Banker: [Opens mouth. Decides not to ask. Resumes typing.]1093 is also 11111113, that is 1+3+32+33+34+35+36 (see 121).
1100 in binary (base 2) is 10001001100, which has an even number of 1's. For this reason 1100 is called "evil" (as contrasted with odious numbers). But in decimal 1100 has two 1's, so it's "evil" in decimal as well.
1101 in binary (base 2) is 10001001101, which has an odd number of 1's. For this reason 1101 is called "odious" (as contrasted with evil numbers). But in decimal 1101 has three 1's, so it's "odious" in decimal as well.
Appears in Star Wars as a reference to George Lucas' earlier movie THX 1138. See also 2187.
According to some (e.g. project 1138), the number of benefits and protections afforded to married couples under United States federal laws.
Along with 1210, forms an "amicable pair" like 220 and 284.
Like 204, its square is also triangular — see 41616 for more.
The smallest "self-describing" number: Its digits comprise 1 zero, 2 ones, 1 two, and 0 threes. See 6210001000 for more.
1225 = 352 = 49×50/2 is both square and triangular. This is closely related to the fact that 1225 is the sum of the first five odd cubes: 1 + 8 + 27 + 125 + 729. See also 204 and 1296.
This number has 36 distinct divisors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 28, 30, 35, 36, 42, 45, 60, 63, 70, 84, 90, 105, 126, 140, 180, 210, 252, 315, 420, 630, and 1260. No smaller number has so many divisors, so 1260 is a divisibility record-setter. The fairly popular numbers 8, 24 and 40 are missing from this list; 1260 is the largest such record-setter not divisible by 8.
In the Rubik's Cube group (see 43252003274489856000) it is possible to make a set of moves that scrambles the cube, and for which the same set of moves must be repeated a total of 1260 times to get back to the initial position. In group theory terminology that set of moves is an "element" of the Rubik's Cube group, and its "order" is 1260. There are no elements with order greater than 1260.
Numbers with lots of divisors were popular in ancient civilisations; well-known examples include 12, 24, 60 and 360. 1260 is not as famous but it does appear in the Bible, both explicitly in Rev 12:6 and implicitly with the phrase "a time, and times, and half a time"12 in Rev 12:14.
"A time, and times, and half a time" is generally taken to be a reference to a period of 31/2 years12,13, and an allusion to similar phrases in Dan 7:25 and Dan 12:711. The "years" in question are probably the Babylonian "lunar years" of 360 days, so 31/2 years is 1260 days — the same time period referred to explicitly in Rev 12:6, and described as "42 months" (42×30 days) in Rev 11:2 and Rev 13:5. All of these are meant to refer to a "prophetic", not literal, period of time in which "1 day" in the text represents one year in real life (this is kind of like the Hindu manvantara, see 4320000000). In other words, the period being referred to is 1260 years, or perhaps 1260 Babylonian lunar years which would be 453600 days.
Round numbers with more divisors were more likely to show up in ancient writings, partly because of the difficulty of manipulating "odd" numbers accurately. 1260 might have been more appealing to the ancients because 1260 days is exactly 180 weeks (180 being another record-setter), or perhaps because 1260 is 12×100+60.
There are many other numbers involved in apocalyptic predictions, such as 1290, 1335 and 2300 (intervals of years and of days mentioned in the book of Daniel); 945000=360×(1290+1335); etc.
Mentioned in the Old Testament apocalyptic book Daniel (see 1260).
The sum of the first 8 cubes, and like all such sums, also the square of the 8th triangular number. Since that is 362, it is also a 4th power. See also 216 and 1225.
This is the number of distinct positive integers that can be represented in Roman Numerals in six characters or less. To learn why this would be of particular interest to the American Kennel Club, see Matt Parker's video.
1331 = 113, a fact that holds in all bases higher than 3 (where you get "2101"). See 121.
1331 resembles a row of Pascal's triangle; see 14641.
Mentioned in the Old Testament apocalyptic book Daniel: "Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days." (KJV). See also 1260.
An alternate spelling of leet; see 31337.
1353 = 13+14+15+...+52+53, a member of sequence A186074 and its subset {15, 1353, 133533, 13335333, ...} all of which have the same property. See 429 for more. (Contributed by Matt Goers)
The number of ways to pick 5 numbers from 1 to 25 (with no two the same) and have them add up to 65.
The number of junctions between the neurons and muscles in the nematode worm C. elegans. See 959.
1460 is 365×4, and therefore the number of years that have to pass (in a Julian calendar) to accumulate an entire years' worth of leap days.
This was known to the Egyptians as the Sothic cycle, the number of 365-day calendar years that have to pass for the calendar to once again agree with the seasons.
The Egyptians had a simple 365-day calendar for civil purposes (being close enough to the equator that the seasons didn't affect the length of their day too much). However there was one critical seasonal cycle, the flooding of the Nile (which comes in August, and derives from seasonal rainfall patterns in Sudan, Ethiopia, etc.). This generally came at a time close to the "heliacal rising" of Sirius, which is when Sirius first becomes visible in the early morning just before dawn. (Other sources I found say that the rising of Orion at sunset coincided with the flooding of the Nile.)
Since the rising of the star is much less variable than the timing of the flood, it can be used to try to calibrate a calendar for purposes of determining how often to have leap years. The 365-day Egyptian calendar continued in unbroken use for two (or perhaps three) entire cycles. After a cycle had been completed, by looking back at the written record of Pharaohs' reigns, they could calculate the length of the cycle.
This knowledge was used to set up the 365.25-day Roman calendar. On the advice of the Alexandrian astronomer Solsigenes, the approximation 1460 = 365×4 was used by Julius Caesar for the Julian calendar. The Egyptian calendar (with its original month names and 5-day intercalary month coinciding with the beginning of the Nile flood period) remained in use and was also modified to a 365.25-day cycle; it is still used to this day (as the Coptic Orthodox Church's liturgical calendar).
Over the long term, the cycle would be a larger number of years, closer to the true average of 1508.0833. But because Sirius is not on the Ecliptic, the precession of the Earth's axis causes it to rise at a rate that varies over the period of a 25800-year precession cycle.
The number of days in a "quadrennium" or "Olympiad" of 4 Julian years: 365×4+1.
1508.0833 = 365.242189670 / 0.242189670
Divide the length of a tropical year (in this particular case, the 365.242189670 value) by its fractional part: 365.24218967 / 0.24218967 = 1508.08327... This gives the number of years for a 365-day calendar to "drift all the way around" and once again align with the seasons.
It is also the average length of the sothic cycle over an entire 25800-year precession cycle. See 1460.
(Durer's Melencolia I)
In the year 1514, German artist Albrecht Durer created one of his better-known works, Melencolia I, a still-life containing many symbols of alchemy including a 4×4 associative magic square containing the numbers 15 and 14 in adjacent positions. The full 4×4 square appearing in Melencolia is:
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Each row (such as 16+3+2+13), column and diagonal adds up to 34. It has to be 34 because the sum of all 16 of the numbers must be the sum of four rows, and also the sum of all 16 numbers, thus we have 4M=16×17/2 where M is the magic sum, thus M=34.
Also, the four numbers in any one quadrant (for example, the upper-left quadrant, 16+3+5+10) add to 34. Because this magic square is "associative", there are a lot of other sets of 4 squares that add to 34, such as the four corners, the four in the centre, and other symmetrical patterns such as 3+2+15+14, 16+6+11+1, etc. Any pattern shaped like one of the following, including rotations and reflections (a total of 28 patterns) will work:
10 4 11 4 12 1 14 2 15 2 20 2 X X . . X . X . X . . X X . . . X . . . . X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . X . . . . . . . . X X . X . X X . . X . . . X . . . X . X X . 22 2 23 4 24 4 25 2 60 1 . X . . . X . . . X . . . X . . . . . . X . . . . X . . . . X . . . . X . X X . . . . X . . X . . X . . X . . . . X X . . . X . . . X . . . X . . . X . . . . .
See also 65, 216, 6720, and 6227020800.
The year of the beginning of the Windows NT time counting system (specifically, midnight GMT at the beginning of Jan 1 1601, using the Gregorian calendar and a "proleptic" definition of "GMT"). See 134774 and 11644473600.
(a mile in meters)
The length of a mile in meters. This is exact, since the inch is defined as precisely 2.54 cm. See also 1.609344, 63360 and 1609344.
The smallest 4-digit Armstrong or "narcissistic" number: 1634 = 14+64+34+44. See also
Number of years from the Creation to the Flood in the Hebrew tradition (and Judeo-Christian Bible). See 86400 for more details.
In the classical Chinese 3×3 magic square, the rows can be treated as 3-digit numbers: 492+357+816 = 294+753+618 = 834+159+672 = 438+951+276 = 1665. This works because of the symmetry of the arrangement of the digits and 1665 is the repunit 111 times the magic sum 15.
In 1974 a radio message was sent from the Arecibo observatory towards star cluster M13 (a group of stars about 25,100 light years away) containing 1679 bits of data modulated by frequency shift keying. The number 1679 was chosen because it is a semiprime — a receiver of the message would presumably notice this, then try to arrange the data into a 23×73 or 73×23 rectangle to look for a pattern.
(8 quadruple factorial)
This is 8×7×6×5 = 8! / 4!. Numbers of the form 2N!/N! are called quadruple factorials. The quadruple factorials are: 1, 2, 12, 120, 1680, 30240, 665280, 17297280, ... (Sloane's A1813).
Confusing, but there is another definition of "quaruple factorial" that is more like the "double factorials", in which you form a product by starting with some integer N and subtracting 4 each time: 1680 = 14×10×6×2. Using this definition, all of the 2N!/N! numbers are included, plus three intermediate values between each one: 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 12, 21, 32, 45, 120, 231, 384, 585, 1680, 3465, 6144, 9945, 30240, 65835, 122880, ... (Sloane's A7662). See also 105.
(I happen to think that this name "quaruple factorial" is even worse than "double factorial", but that's just me.)
1680 is also a highly composite number.
The product of three consecutive integers (a 3-d oblong number), and also one of the central numbers in Pascal's Triangle, namely the 7th term in row 13. This coincidence happens because 7! = 5040 = 10×9×8×7 (and therefore, 13!/(7!×6!) = 13!/10!); see 3628800 for more on this.
This is 123, the number of cubic inches in a cubic foot. It is sometimes called a great gross53. See also 1729 and 3456.
The Hardy-Ramanujan "Taxicab number", made famous by a story involving the two early 20th-century mathematicians. As the story goes, Hardy commented to Ramanujan that he had just ridden in taxicab number 1729 and that the number had no particular significance that he (Hardy) knew of. Ramanujan replied that 1729 did indeed have a special property: it is the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways: 1729 = 123+13 = 103+93. It is thus also a near-miss to Fermat's Last Theorem.
This feat seems extraordinary, and most write it off to the fact that Ramanujan had a sort of savant calculation ability. Ramanujan did work on the problem of finding A,B,C such that A3+B3=C3±1; see my article on Sequences Related to the Work of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Even without that, it is easy to see how this particular property of this number could be noticed by considering the following:
First of all, once a modest-sized list of cubes has been memorised (something that many folks with a passion for numbers do, see 7776 and the Feynman anecdote below), it is easy to recognise 1729 as the combination of 103=1000 and 93=729, and it is next to 123=1728.
Ramanujan also knew that 1729 is the lowest such number. There are a lot of sums to check — if one were to consider an exhaustive search, there are almost a hundred ways to add two cubes and get a total that is less than 1729. The sums are: 1+1=2, 1+8=9, 8+8=16, 1+27=28, 8+27=35, 27+27=54, 1+64=65, ... (OEIS sequence A3325). Somehow you have to mentally look through the "list" to find if any of these occur twice.
An important insight, and the type of thing mathematicians like Ramanujan would surely notice, is that any whole number N differs from its cube N3 by a multiple of 6. (This is related in a rather nifty way to the symmetries of the cube, viz. its 3-fold rotational symmetry around the main diagonal combined with a mirror symmetry) For example, 13=0×6+1, 23=1×6+2, 33=4×6+3, 43=10×6+4, 53=20×6+5, (6+0)3=36×6+0, (6+1)3=57×6+1, (6+2)3=85×6+2, and so on.
Here are the cubes up to 123 classified with letters a through f for the 6 different values of N3 mod 6:
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The sum 729+1000 is a c plus a d, a sum of the form 6x+1. To get another 6x+1 sum requires an a+f, a b+e, or a different c+d type sum. So there are far fewer combinations to check for any given sum. To get a sum from two cubes, you have to increase one of the cubes whilst decreasing the other — and the bigger cubes involve bigger increments. So, going from 1000 up to 1331, we can't just reduce the 729 one step down to 512, the sum would be too big.
See also 87539319, the sum of two cubes in three ways.
See also 50, 65, 635318657, 18426689288, 588522607645608, 336365328016955757248, and 10^{102.1485709110445×1038).
Another lovely anecdote about 1729 involves Richard Feynman, the physicist from Cal Tech. Feynman was in a restaurant in Brazil and ended up in a sort of mind-vs-machine contest with an expert abacus operator. After losing to the abacist in addition (handily) and multiplication (a closer race) then coming up dead even in long division, he was challenged to extract the cube root of "any old number", and the number they were given, intentionally chosen at random, turned out to be 1729.03. Feynman remembered that 1728 is 123, so in his head he did the following (which can be derived from the derivative for xk, or a simple inversion of the binomial expansion for (a+b)3):
(1728+1)1/3 = 12 (1+1/1728)1/3 = 12 (1 + (3)(1/1728) + ...)
≈ 12 + 1/432
He then began performing the long division 1/432 in his head, and got as far as "12.002.." before being proclaimed the winner.43 Since 12+1/432 = 12..0023148148... and 1729.031/3 = 12.0023837856..., he could have given one more digit of 1/432 and still been correct.
1729 is also the third Carmichael number. Its factors are 7×13×19; J. Chernick proved that any number of the form (6n+1)×(12n+1)×(18n+1) is a Carmichael number provided that all three are prime. The "Chernick numbers" are: 1729, 294409=37×73×109, 56052361, 118901521, 172947529, ... (Sloane's sequence A33502).
The first of a set of 4 equally-spaced primes, with no other primes in between: 1741, 1747, 1753, and 1759 are all prime. See also 47, 251, 9843019, 121174811 and 19252884016114523644357039386451.
The mass ratio between the proton and electron. Some folks believe it has deeper meaning, or a magic formula, similarly to the situation with the fine-structure constant.
The mass ratio between the neutron and electron. It sometimes attracts attention similar to that given to the fine-structure constant.
(the nautical mile)
The number of meters in a nautical mile. This unit was originally defined as the length of one minute of latitude along a meridian (or, more approximately, any great circle) on the Earth. This makes the circumference of the Earth 360×60=21600 nautical miles long. This was done for a utilitarian reason — you can take a distance on a chart, measure it against the latitude gridlines on the edge of the map, and that tells you how many nautical miles long it is. The approximation varies with location because the Earth is not a perfect sphere; most of the variation is a gradual decrease in length from pole to equator. See also 1852.216, 5280 and 20003931.4585.
The length (in meters) that the nautical mile (see 1852) would need to be in order for the mean meridian (see 20003931.4585) to be exactly 60×180 = 10800 nautical miles (one nautical mile per arc-minute). See also 10800.
1951 is a prime number, and curiously the year in which the record for largest-known prime was broken for the first time in 75 years. The record was broken twice in that year — the first time by Ferrier using a mechanical desk calculator, then a second time by Miller and Wheeler using an electronic computer. 34
2001 = 3×23×29, three distinct primes which are distinct from the three primes that make up 1001. This causes the rather nice digit pattern of the primorial 6469693230=2003001×323×10.
Because of its three distinct primes, and along with other nearby numbers like 1998, 2001 is part of John H. Conway's advanced (for numbers up to 712) mental factoring technique.
Because the first year was year 1, and 1+2000=2001, 2001 is the 2000th anniversary of the year 1 (in whatever calendar you wish, most recently this happened in the Christian calendars, such as the Gregorian calendar). New Years' revelers made a bigger deal about the year 2000, but I consider 2001 to be the "real" millennium year.
A popular apocalyptic date (usually given as the date of the winter solstice, December 21st) because it is close to a hypothesised rollover date for a certain Mayan calendar (see 5126). That calendar was more likely designed to roll over in the year 4772 AD (on October 13th according to 80).
For New Year's Eve 2013, Hans Havermann pointed out (to math-fun114) that:
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!×2!+1! = 2013
The order and precedence follow normal rules:
((10/9!)×8!)×7! - 6!×5!/4! + 3!×2! + 1!
= (10/362880)×40320×5040 - 720×120/24 + 6×2 + 1
= 5600 - 3600 + 12 + 1
= 2013
2013 was the last of several recent years in which such a simple construction was possible:
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!×2!×1! = 2012
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!×2!-1! = 2011
(no 2010)
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!+2!+1! = 2009
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!+2!×1! = 2008
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!+2!-1! = 2007
(gap)
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!/2!+1! = 2004
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!/2!×1! = 2003
10/9!×8!×7!-6!×5!/4!+3!/2!-1! = 2002
A "self-describing" number, like 1210 and 21200; see 6210001000 for more.
The "year 2037 problem" is discussed at 2147483647.
The first Mersenne number that is not prime; see 496 and 8384512.
The largest known power of 2 whose digits are all even. Higher powers of 2 have been checked at least as far as 27725895275426. One does not need to check all of the digits because (for example) you can check just the last 20 digits and the odds are only 1 in 220 that all will be even.
See also 2.95×1020.
A prime number made from consecutive digits (rearranged); see also 7652413.
See 8712.
The product of 27=33 and 81=34, and containing the same four digits (see also 8127).
The house number of the childhood home of Martin Gardner, the longtime writer of the Mathematical Games column of Scientific American responsible for so many amateur mathematicians' introduction to popular mathematics. In one of his columns his character Dr. Matrix described many properties of 2187: it is the 297th lucky number; add its digits in reverse (7812) and get 2187+7812=9999; its digits can also be arranged to make 1728 and 8127, etc.
George Lucas was inspired by Arthur Lipsett's film mashup 21-87. "The force" comes from a line by Roman Kroitor in this movie. In a tribute reference, when Han Solo and Luke rescue princess Leia in Star Wars, they find her in cell 2187 (within cell block 1138).
2202 yojana is a distance that figures in a now-famous comment by Sayana a minister to King Bukka I of 14th-century India, in his commentary on the Rigveda. The full quote is "[it is] remembered that the sun traverses 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha". A yojana is a unit of distance, whose definition varies throughout history and by context. It is agreed that a yojana is 4 kro'sha, but the definition of kro'sha can be either 1000 or 2000 dhanu. As a result, a yojana is either 4.5 or 9 miles (other sources say 5, "about 8 to 10", and 40). But if the figure of 9 miles is used, the speed of the sun is 39636 miles per nimesha. A nimesha is 1/405000 of a day, so converting to standard units, we have 299128 kilometers per second — very close to the speed of light. This is usually taken as being much more significant than mere coincidence would suggest, with the implication that Sayana was actually speaking of the speed of light, not of the Sun. However, it was common to estimate the speed of the Sun in its daily "orbit" in the old geocentric cosmology model, and some Hindu/Indian estimates are comparable. For example, in the Vayu Purana, chapter 50, the Sun is said to move 3150000 yojana in 1/30 of a day, or about 16000 kilometers per second. See also 405000
See also 299128000 and 309467700.0.
A member of the Lucas-Lehmer-like sequence 3, 7, 47, 2207, 4870847, ...; see 47 for more.
This number appears in the film Monsters, Inc. as the code number for an incident in which a monster has been "contaminated" with something from a child's bedroom (scarer George has a child's sock on his back upon returning to the factory floor). It is an inside joke from the Pixar team that made the movie, but the exact explanation is uncertain. It could refer to US law, title 18, section 2319 which details the penalties for criminal infringement of copyright; or the "23" and "19" could represent the letters W and S respectively, initials of "white sock" or even "Wazowski" and "Sullivan" (the movie's main characters).
This is a prime number whose digits are the four 1-digit primes, in ascending order. See also 3257, 4567, and 7.232325232...×103119.
This number appears in a widely-circulated, and wildly inaccurate, email warning about long-distance phone charges. While there is still a bit of truth to the warnings, the central figure of "$2425 per minute" (meaning 2425 U.S. dollars) has always been wrong.
The initial "$24" happens to be the Hexadecimal code for the '$' character in the ASCII character set. At some point early in this particular chain email, the dangerously high telephone toll rate was a much more realistic (and probably accurate) $25/minute. But an email software with improper handling of special characters turned the '$' character into a "hexadecimal escape", which is $ followed by the ASCII code in base 16: $24. Combined with the original number 25, this resulted in $2425, a much more frightening figure which became the primary reason for the email becoming an addictive chain letter.
See also 23148855308184500.00.
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Quick index: if you're looking for a specific number, start with whichever of these is closest: 0.065988... 1 1.618033... 3.141592... 4 12 16 21 24 29 39 46 52 64 68 89 107 137.03599... 158 231 256 365 616 714 1024 1729 4181 10080 45360 262144 1969920 73939133 4294967297 5×1011 1018 5.4×1027 1040 5.21...×1078 1.29...×10865 1040000 109152051 101036 101010100 — — footnotes Also, check out my large numbers and integer sequences pages.
s.30