Open Thread, November 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.

This is a random question, and I have poked around a bit on Google looking for the answer: what's the convention for pronouncing particular instances of Knuth's up-arrow notation? Like, if you had 3^^^3, how would you actually say that out loud? I always find myself stumbling through something like "three three-up-arrows three," but that seems terribly clunky. I also read somewhere that "3^^^3" would read as "three threes," which is more elegant, but doesn't seem to work when the numbers are different -- e.g., how would you say "3^^^4"? Anyway, I figured someone here would know.

I would say "power of"

So "three to the power of the power of the power of three"

3Nisan14y

I don't care what the convention is, but I say "three to the to the to the three!".

3EricHerboso14y

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.)

8

Open Thread, November 1-15, 2012

8

8

8

Open Thread, November 1-15, 2012

8

8