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Panic_Lobster comments on More "Stupid" Questions - Less Wrong
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How do you pronounce 3^^^3?
Three to the to the to the three / is how you say it if you're M to the P
But I thought you were M sub P...
I've heard "three up up up three."
That's how I say it.
Threee-eee-eee.
"three up arrow up arrow up arrow three"
ETA: The notation is called Knuth's up-arrow notation, and is usually written with up-arrows instead of carets.
Alternatively, "three triple up-arrow three"
"Three to the pentation of three".
How about 3^...(3^^^3 up arrows)...^3?
Hmm. "Three to the 'three to the pentation of three plus two'-ation of three". Alternatively, "big" would also work.
(There was a SMBC comic I wanted to jokingly link to which called ^^^ “penetration”, but I don't know how to search for it -- neither this thing nor googling for
smbc penetrationhelp.)Here you go!
I googled "tetration" with "smbc" which gave me an smbc forum topic which listed the date of the comic in question.
3-pentate-3. Actually pronouncing the up-arrows is generally too clunky for me.
How do you pronounce 3^(n)3, that is, 3 (n up-arrows) 3? "n-tate" works for simple numbers, but "3 (3 pentate 3)-ate 3" isn't exactly... comprehensible.
"3 hyper-n 3". Note that the 'n' used in both the greek-number-prefix "n-tate" and hyper forms is actually "number of up arrows + 2".
For particularly large numbers Conways chained arrows may be preferable, I'm not sure if there is a convention for pronouncing them.
I like "Three-triple-Knuth-three"
My inclination is to say "three triple-arrow three".
People at SIAI in 2010 were saying "three triple-head three". I don't know why.
I say "three triple-hat three", which may be linguistic drift from 'head'.
I pronounce it "three trip-up three". The pun is always appropriate.
Can I get a joke-explainer?
My guess: "trip" as an abbreviation of "triple" but also in the sense of an acid trip, given the mind-blowingly large quantity referred to.
"To trip up" means "to cause to stumble or make an error". It's also short for triple-up-arrow. Putting a 3^^^3 into an argument often trips up reasoning, and that's the main reason people use that number.
(Apparently this is less intuitive than I thought; MrMind pointed out a third interpretation, which I hadn't thought of before.)
Oh haha, I see. I didn't make the connection to tripping up arguments (nor did MrMind's acid trip interpretation occur to me). Thanks!
I have a proposal: let's call x^^^y "x knuth y", just because it's used quite often in this community :)
ok, since this is the stupid questions thread, how do you pronounce "knuth"? I really have no idea.
Ka-NOOTH.
When I want to know how to pronounce someone's name I look on their Wikipedia page or their own site. If that fails, I do Google searches like "donald knuth" pronunciation. If that fails too and I want to know badly enough, I look for video or audio of them saying it, or of someone else who presumably would know saying it. This last has misled me at least once: When I first saw Patri Friedman's name, I guessed it was pronounced "PA-tree", but wasn't sure. Then I heard someone on the Internet pronounce it "puh-TREE", and I figured they probably knew. Then I said it in conversation with Shannon Friedman and she told me it was "PA-tree". (I appreciated the correction. Note also that since I didn't physically make a note, there's a small possibility I'm misremembering which pronunciation is correct.)
I think an apostrophe is a better way of indicating to English speakers the way Danish treats an initial k, as in K'nuth. There's no actual vowel in there. Also it looks cooler, as in ph'nglui mglw'nafh K'nuth R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Fits right in, doesn't it?
The most obvious interpretation of "3 knuth 3" is 27. A single 'knuth' up arrow denotes exponentiation. Conceivably "3 triple-knuth 3" would convey the intended meaning.
"Three ar-ruh-ruh-row"
I usually say "three to the three to the three to the three" even though that's not technically correct unless I pronounce the parentheses in the proper places.
That isn't correct no matter where the parentheses go: 3^^^3 isn't 3^(3^(3^3)) or ((3^3)^3)^3.
You're right, I misunderstood - I thought it was 3^(3^27), or 3^7625597484987, but it's actually 3^^(3^27), or 3 to the power of itself 7625597484987 times, which is way bigger.