Boring Number Shrine
CURRENT MOST BORING NUMBER*:
The mathematician GH Hardy told a story about visiting his friend Ramanujan in hospital:
“I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one. “No,” he replied, “it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”
What makes a number interesting? Aren’t all numbers interesting? Having a dedicated Wikipedia page is a good indicator of widely-accepted relevance nowadays.
I started at 1 and went through Wikipedia to see what the lowest number was which didn’t have its own page.
On Friday, July 18th, 2014 at 2:13 PM, it was 224. Nothing interesting about 224, apparently. Which makes it quite special. Remarkable. Worthy of its own Wikipedia page, almost.
A year later, I checked again.
On Tuesday, March 10th, 2015 at 3:25 PM, the lowest number without its own Wikipedia page was 247.
Since then, I have seen the number rise many times.
There will always be a number which is considered too dull to have its own entry.
Which makes it special in itself.
But that won’t earn it a page on Wikipedia.
So this page will act as a shrine to celebrate the current smallest boring, irrelevant number.
*drop me a line if you notice it’s changed