Friday, June 22nd .....

I had seen this girl on the train in Japan reading a book called ‘Alex’s Adventures in Numberland’.  Because of her choice of reading material and her obvious shyness and the way in which she spoke to us, my first instinct was to suspect she might have Asperger’s Syndrome.  On reflection, of course, that was a real rush to judgement.  I had drawn a conclusion from the symptoms which may or may not have been correct.  After all, 2+2 doesn’t always make 4; if you’re working in Base 3, for example, it makes 11.

Yes, you’ve guessed it.  I had to go out and find the book and I have found it surprisingly readable and interesting.  It has 371 pages and I read 226 before I became bogged down – in an erudite discussion of pi and how many people have spent their lives calculating its value to thousands of decimal places.

The early chapters covered the history of mathematics and why we use 10 as the basis for our counting.  I was amazed to hear that there is a strong movement in various parts of the world which would prefer us to count in twelves.  They’ve invented two new numbers; dek and el.  The book also reminded me of the system used by Lincolnshire shepherds in medieval times –

Yan, Tan, Tethera, Pethera, Pimp,

Sethera, Lethera, Hovera, Covera, Dik

Yan-a-Dik, Tan-a-Dik, Tethera-Dik, Pethera-Dik, Bumfit,

and so on.

The interesting thing is that, in that system, a Pimp + a Dik = a Bumfit.

The book talks about many of the geniuses who’ve worked in this field and the eccentric people who dabble in the shallows.  Maki Kaji runs a Japanese magazine that specialises in number puzzles.  In his spare time he takes photographs of car number plates.  In Japan, a typical number plate has two numerals followed by two more numerals, like 56-72.  Kaji is interested in the plates where the first two numbers multiply together to make the second pair, like 35 –15 (3x5=15).  Apparently there are only 81 possible combinations, from 11-01 to 99-81.  Kaji has already photographed over 50; when he has the lot, he plans to exhibit them in a gallery.  I wonder who will go to see them.

I’m going to skip over rest of the chapter on pi and move on to phi, or the Golden Mean.  Watch this space.