EricHerboso comments on Open Thread, November 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 02 November 2012 02:11AM

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Comment author: EricHerboso 03 November 2012 02:40:30AM *  3 points [-]

It's been a few years since I heard this pronounced aloud, but my old undergrad prof's pronunciation of "3^^^3" was "3 hyper5 3". The "hyper5" part refers to the fact that three up-arrows is pentation. Similarly, "x^^y" is "x hyper4 y", because two up-arrows indicate tetration.

In general, add 2 to the number of up-arrows, and that's the hyper number you'd use.

(I should mention that I've never heard it used by anyone other than him, so it might have been just his way of saying it, as opposed to the way of saying it.)

Comment author: Jay_Schweikert 04 November 2012 01:58:22AM 0 points [-]

Thanks to everyone for all the answers. I'd say this one makes the most sense to me -- pretty quick to say and easily scalable for any number -- but I guess there's just not one, well-accepted convention.