Comments on: 11630 is the First Uninteresting Number

By: Derek Jones

Derek Jones — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:33:24 +0000

I think that in a real-world (i.e., non-mathematical) context most integers are uninteresting in that they are unlikely to convey useful information unless a significant amount of context is provided. Many floating-point numbers are much more distinctive, e.g., Pi. I am collecting distinctive/interesting floating-point numbers with the aim of using them to figure out the application domain of source code.

By: Darrah Chavey

Darrah Chavey — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:50:31 +0000

Consider the sequence:
210, 230, 231, 250, 252, 253, 270, 273, 275, 276, 290, 294, 297, 299, …
which consists of all numbers which can be written as the sum of 20 or more consecutive positive integers. Then this sequence includes all of your list of “uninteresting numbers” except for 13982 and 14163. The fact that this sequence contains so many otherwise uninteresting numbers seems to make it an interesting sequence! (I wonder if Sloane would agree?) In particular:
11630 = 572 + 573 + … + 590 + 591
12067 = 538 + … + 559
12407 = 308 + … + 345
12887 = 239 + … + 287
13258 = 460 + … + 487
13794 = 402 + … + 434
13882 = 294 + … + 337
14018 = 305 + … + 347

I think that a number being a sum of consecutive prime numbers is also interesting. So with your list of otherwise uninteresting numbers, we have:
12067 is the sum of all primes from 4019 up to 4027.
12407 is the sum of all primes from 113 up to 397.
13882 is the sum of all primes from 5 up to 397.
13882 is the sum of all primes from 2293 up to 2339.
13982 is the sum of all primes from 1117 up to 1213.
14018 is the sum of all primes from 3491 up to 3517.

(Also, 12887 = 112^2 + 7^3, which is kind of cool.)

So that leaves us with only 14163 from your list. I’ll admit it, that number is just plain boring

– Darrah

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:49:55 +0000

11630 – the only 5-digit number to ever have an entire blog based off of it.

QED

By: Nathaniel

Nathaniel — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:54:56 +0000

@Preston - It was just a joke.

By: Preston

Preston — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:23:48 +0000

“If you’re unfamiliar with it (i.e., if you’re not a math person and have no place reading my blog)”

I may not be a math person, and I may have no business reading this blog, but not knowing about the OEIS doesnt mean Im not interested in interesting numbers.

By: m.c,khosla

m.c,khosla — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:13:05 +0000

@anon 9 is not a prime number.

By: interesting and uninteresting numbers | Everyone Read It!

interesting and uninteresting numbers | Everyone Read It! — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:13:30 +0000

[...] Wikipedia points out, Nathaniel Johnson has given a slightly different formulation of the question, that seems more objective, [...]

By: Nathaniel

Nathaniel — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:55:31 +0000

@Fletcher Tomalty – Nope, the interesting number paradox is as old as the hills, and the usual story given for its source is Ramanujan noticing that the “apparently dull” number 1729 can be written as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.

I actually noticed the two posts on reddit today (I’m a fairly active redditor) and have been fairly surprised by the amount of traffic that this post gets.

By: Fletcher Tomalty

Fletcher Tomalty — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:38:45 +0000

Was this originally your idea? If it was, it looks as if you’ve started a meme. I see reddit submissions about this literally all the time. There are two on the front page of http://www.reddit.com/r/math/ right now.

AND there’s even a Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

By: Andrew Weimholt

Andrew Weimholt — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:18:04 +0000

Looks like 11630 finally made it into the OEIS just a few days ago.

I should point out that whether or not a sequence is interesting can often be independent of whether or not it contains terms that are interesting. You can have an uninteresting sequence full of interesting numbers, or an interesting sequence full of uninteresting numbers. Perhaps your sequence was rejected not because the numbers were uninteresting, but because the sequence itself was uninteresting.