{"id":892,"date":"2018-11-16T12:45:44","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T12:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/?page_id=892"},"modified":"2025-02-20T12:35:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T12:35:00","slug":"boring-number-shrine","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/?page_id=892","title":{"rendered":"Boring Number Shrine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boring Number Shrine<\/h3>\n

<\/h4>\n

CURRENT MOST BORING NUMBER*:<\/h4>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

The mathematician GH Hardy told a story about visiting his friend Ramanujan in hospital:<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.”<\/em><\/p>\n

What makes a number interesting? Aren\u2019t all numbers interesting? Having a dedicated Wikipedia page is a good indicator of widely-accepted relevance nowadays.<\/p>\n

I started at 1 and went through Wikipedia to see what the lowest number was which didn\u2019t have its own page.<\/p>\n

On Friday, July 18th, 2014 at 2:13 PM, it was 224<\/strong>. Nothing interesting about 224, apparently. Which makes it quite special. Remarkable. Worthy of its own Wikipedia page, almost.<\/p>\n

A year later, I checked again.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, March 10th, 2015 at 3:25 PM, the lowest number without its own Wikipedia page was 247<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Since then, I have seen the number rise many times.<\/p>\n

There will always be a number which is considered too dull to have its own entry.<\/p>\n

Which makes it special in itself.<\/p>\n

But that won\u2019t earn it a page on Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

So this page will act as a shrine to celebrate the current smallest boring, irrelevant number.<\/p>\n

*drop me a line if you notice it\u2019s changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boring Number Shrine CURRENT MOST BORING NUMBER*: The mathematician GH Hardy told a story about visiting his friend Ramanujan in hospital: \u201cI 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-892","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1410,"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/892\/revisions\/1410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraintedwards.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}