As you know, Three is a magic number. Yes it is. It's a magic number.
Taken from the "School House Rock Rocks" album, this song holds a special place in my heart (although the best song on the album was, by far, Ween's cover of "The Shot Heard 'Round The World"), since I'm a numbers geek.
Not quantum sciences or statistical math or calculus or any of that braniac stuff, but I still remember in Grade 5, being taught the basic rules of how you can tell a if a number is divisible simply by looking at it.
Want to know if a number is divisible by 2? Just look to see if it's odd or even. DIvisible by 3? Well, add up all of the numbers in that number, i.e. 763- 7+6+3=16. Can you divide that by 3? No? Then you're SOL. 978? Good to go.
You can divide any number by 4 provided the last two numbers in the string are factors of 4. 5- if the number ends in a 5 or a 0. 6? Divisible by 2 AND 3.
8? Last three numbers in the string are factors of 8 (that is, 338 isn't, but 907,432 is). Nine is the same as 3, but the numbers in the string need to add up to 9.
There's no rule for 7, you need to do the actual math for that one. But play around, and you'll see that the rest of the rules hold true.
Metal.
My Trusted MOGs
i appreciate this post....3 is the magic number is a schoolhouse rock jam...there is no song about it, but i have much love for "the rule of 72" if you've heard of that...
not to mention that this past saturday, at 1:23:45 am it was 6/7/08 otherwise known as the rare 12345678 sequence - which only happens early in a century.
The next time it will happen will be at 2:34:56 a.m. on July 8, 2009.
dope.
My Trusted MOGs
Yeap, was taken by those divisiblity rules you metioned and a bit later by pythagoras theorem, http://www.mathsisfun.com/pythagoras.html, and the 3,4,5 sequence and its use being suspected of going back to pre-history to square construction.