Day: 21 March 2019

I show that for the same reason that the golden ratio, ϕ=1.6180334.., can be considered the most irrational number, that 1 + √2 can be considered the 2nd most irrational number, and indeed why (9 + √221)/10 can be considered the 3rd most irrational number.

Let us imagine a game between two kids, Emily and Sam – both strong and determined in their own way who spend their entire lives trying to outwit each other, instead of doing their homework. (A real life Generative Adversial Network…)

Emily, proudly reminds us that she simultaneously bears the same first name as Emily Davison, the most famous of British suffragettes; Emily Balch, Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Emilie du Chatelet, who wrote the first French translation and commentary of Isaac Newton’s “Principia”; Emily Roebling, Chief Engineer of New York’s iconic Brooklyn Bridge; Emily Bronte author of Wuthering Heights; Emily Wilson, the first female editor of ‘New Scientist‘ publication; and also Emmy Noether, who revolutionized the field of theoretical physics.

On the other side we have Sam (and all his minion friends, who are aptly called Sam-002, Sam-003, Sam-004) who is part human / part robot and plays Minecraft or watches Youtube, 24/7.

They agree to play a game where Emily thinks of a number, and then Sam (with the possible help of his minions) has 60 seconds to find any fractions that are equal to Emily’s number.

And so the game begins…

Emily says “8.5″.

Sam & friends quickly reply with “85/10″,… “34/4″,…  “17/2″,… “425/50″,…

They soon realize that all these answers are equally valid because they are all equivalent fractions. Being competitive they want to pick a single winner, so they all agree that the best answer is the one with the lowest denominator. And so, 17/2 is deemed the best answer.

This time, Emily tries to make it harder by picking ‘0.123456‘. After only a slight pause, Sam  slyly says “123456/1000000“.

Emily’s annoyed with this answer. She knows that although the best answer would be the irreducible fraction 1929/15625, Sam’s answer is still valid answer, and furthermore he will always be able to instantly answer like this if she picks any number with a terminating decimal expansion.

So this time, Emily picks “π”.

…

Delightful exploration of the idea that while all irrational numbers are irrational, some can be considered more-irrational than others if you consider the complexity of the convergent series of fractions necessary to refine the representation of it. Some of this feels to me like the intersection between meta-mathematics and magic, but it’s well-written enough that I was able to follow along all the way to the end and I think that you should give it a go, too.