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Mysterious Number 6174

plus.maths.org — The number 6174 is a really mysterious number. At first glance, it might not seem so obvious. But as we are about to see, anyone who can subtract can uncover the mystery that makes 6174 so special.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 7, 2007

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  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+144He lost me at 6174...
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+102Phi owns all numbers, mysteriousness-wise.
  • Takteek, on 10/12/2007, -11/+73http://duggmirror.com

    What? Everyone else was doing it.
  • leontes, on 10/12/2007, -3/+44We had a building in college that was built around the golden ratio. The angles, the design, the floors, the ceilings, even the glass pyramids at the top of the place were based around these beautiful, artistic numbers. It was an ugly building, soulless and boring. http://www.oberlin.edu/reslife/images/stevenson.gif
  • Pic0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+41Mysterious page that doesnt load
  • kingkilr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+29It's one H of a lot cooler then Pi :)
  • GenVoss, on 10/12/2007, -4/+304 8 15 16 23 42
  • Fascist, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23http://duggmirror.com/general_sciences/Mysterious_Number_6174_2/
  • TonyCubed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Probably the number of people it took to take down the site
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20sometimes stuff is just interesting...you don't have to care about it to enjoy it...
  • antoniojvr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Error 6174: Not Available.
  • Roger, on 10/12/2007, -10/+25Phi is a crock of *****:

    http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~markov/GoldenRatio.pdf

    In short, you can make any number seem significant if you stretch the truth.
  • tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20@Dested
    How does that make a number special? Can you show me two numbers such that it^3 equals it+1? It's extra special if it's an odd power, because then you can't just take the opposite of it. I just don't get why phi is so special, sure you find it everywhere in nature but not exactly phi, just something close to it.
    You know what other number you also find a lot in nature? One. You see it everywhere and not even rounded, the exact number! It's the number of planets we inhabit, the number of brains we have, the number of hearts we have, etc. Sure phi is a decimal, so it is odd to us, but that really doesn't make it anything special (at least in my opinion).
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Good read about Phi, +1 royall64
    http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMT669/Student.Folders/Frietag.Mark/Homepage/Goldenratio/goldenratio.html
  • halosniper7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6174
  • asteron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Really all integers have some special and interesting property. Consider the set of uninteresting numbers. One of those uninteresting numbers must be the smallest uninteresting number. Being the smallest uninteresting number is a very interesting property indeed! Therefore this number does not belong in the uninteresting set and we can put it into the interesting set.

    You can keep repeating this for all the uninteresting numbers and see that indeed all numbers are rightfully interesting.
  • synae, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Yes, I remember that too...from the article.
  • fortressgame, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10interesting is not the same as 'mysterious'.



  • Pitfan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+981 people and rising.

    I'm not smart enough to understand wtf they are talking about though.
  • IareKEVLAR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8We are all special in our own little way... 6174 is special because it is unique, there are no other numbers that are like it.

    Its okay number, we love you just the way you are, dont go trying to emulate sophisticated numbers like pi, hes a jerk anyways!

  • fani, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Nice. Just pick 6174

    7641 - 1467 = 6714 !!! Wow.

    Its like this number - 142857
    142857 x 1 = 142857
    142857 x 2 = 285714
    142857 x 3 = 428571
    ... and so on..
    142857 x 7 = 999999 !!!
    The first 6 multiplications involve the same digits !!! 142857 !! in same cyclical order - 1 -> 4-> 2 -> 8 -> 5 -> 7
  • chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+81) pick a 4 digit number (like 5341, not with repeating digits)
    2) rearrange in ascending and descending order.
    3) Subtract the bigger number by the smaller one
    4) repeat step 2 (using your new number from the subtraction step) until you reach 6174
  • achoo5000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Phi is the limit of the ratios of the Fibonacci numbers.

    It is special, just like Pi is. Only in the sense that it does pop up in random places and it is useful to us.

    I do agree though that there is no reason to think it is mystical or pretty.

    And yes, 1 is a very important number, that is not news.
  • hiPpymIck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9numerology...continuous loop...
    12 is 1, 2.....
    .........1+2=3
    ..................3+3=6
    ..........................6+6=12 is 1, 2...back to top

    works for 18 too
    you show me how that is mathematically significant. Go ahead, try.
    :-)
  • Infinitas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Another very interesting number is 69.
    Oh yes, however most nerds who mess about with numbers are quite inept about this specific phenomena.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Actually, it's really interesting if you read the article. Don't be like that. What's interesting to some is not always interesting to others.
  • revenge7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8So, what have you done?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6i am so confused
  • scuzzman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6People who are interested in math and science. If you don't, I extend to you the opportunity to not see these stories anymore by unselecting the box marked "General Sciences" in your profile.
  • Kale, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Anything that requires you to re-arrange the numerals and do stuff to them is dependent on the base system used. This will only work for base 10. Perhaps, with base 7, other number of digits will do different things.

    Aside:
    If you take a number, say 17, then spell it out, and count the number of letters, you will always converge on 4. Watch:

    17 ---> Seventeen (9 letters)
    9 ---> Nine
    4 ---> Four

    Again:
    34 --> Thirty Four (10 letters)
    10 --> Ten
    3 ---> Three
    5 ----> Five
    4 ----> Four

    See? :D
  • joeydoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+66174 is still there in the kernal/digit table at the end.
    4 digits = 6174
    6 digits = 631764........ 6(3)17(6)4
    8 digits = 63317664.....6(33)17(66)4
    10 digits = 6333176664 ..6(333)17(666)4

    huh. That is weird.
  • NoctemSaiyaku, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I hate math but love this kind of stuff. So fascinating
  • hiPpymIck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+612 has its moments
    divisible by ..1...2....3....4......6.......12

    so...you can divide 12 things (eg live pigs, cows)....lots of different ways....(without having to cut one in half)

    i guess its why lots of 'old' measures seem to like it (were metric in europe)
  • hazlett, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Instead of arguing abut which number is or is not special, let's be inclusive and agree that ALL numbers are special. No number should be put above another number and no number should be made to feel inferior due to a handicap, i.e. the one-legged 4.
  • elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Mathematician =/= Biologist
  • bdkosher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5How about "enigmatic 9"?

    Take any number that's divisible by 9 and sum up its digits. If there are more than two digits in the sum, sum the digits of that number (and keep repeating if necessary). Eventually, you'll end up with the number 9.

    Ex: 9 x 29835 = 268515 -> 2 + 6 + 8 + 5 + 1 + 5 = 27 -> 2 + 7 = 9
  • Dakusan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Agreed... this has no point... it's not even that mathematically interesting
  • rhettnyedotorg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5also under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_geometry which makes it seem a little witchcrafty, but the fact remains that all things living deny not this universal rule.

    also you're gay
  • AgentAnderson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The cosine of 0.73908513321516064165531208767387 is 0.73908513321516064165531208767387
  • n1f7y, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8we all know 42 is better
  • ray901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+41 x 1 = 1
    11 x 11 = 121
    111 x 111 = 12321
    1111 x 1111 = 1234321
    11111 x 11111 = 123454321
    111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
    1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
    11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
    111111111 x 111111111=123456789 87654321
  • Agret, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"This page was last updated on Oct 20, 1997."
    The layout shows it :P

    "And currently has over 282 different sightings!!"
    Wow those were the days, when 282 people viewing your page meant it was special. I miss 1997 lol
  • jron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3it would be interesting to see the kernel results from 11+ digits.
  • PerroLoco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm no mathematician, however, is there some significance to all of the "kernel" numbers being divisible by 9?
  • achoo5000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This reminds me of a subject in chaos theory.
    This is an example of an iterated map. (Well it might not be exactly because you are mapping the digits rather than the number itself). Here is another interesting map:
    take a number (x) less than 1. and do the following operation:

    y = 2 * x * (1 - x)

    and then take y and do it again. Do it many times and the answer always approaches 0.5 .

    This isn't that interesting until you start messing with the 2 which is at the beginning of the operation.
    consider:

    y = r * x * (1 - x)

    We know that for r=2 the map settles to 0.5. It gets more interesting for other values of r. For example, for r = 3.2 the map doesn't settle onto one number, it jumps back and forth from ~0.513 and ~0.799. In fact, r=3 is the exact point where the map goes from one "fixed point" to a pair of points, this splitting of the fixed points is called a bifurcation. Increase r a little more and you get 4 fixed points (another bifurcation). The bifurcations get closer and closer to one another, but there are an infinity of them and they all pile up right around r=3.570. After that, the map NEVER repeats and you have found a chaotic map. All kinds of weird stuff happens when you vary r a little more, like suddenly it is not chaotic anymore, and increase a little more and it's chaotic again. Actually if you make a graph of the value of r versus the points in the map you get this:

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/LogisticMap_BifurcationDiagram.png/512px-LogisticMap_BifurcationDiagram.png

    You can see the bifurcation at r=3 and the chaos at r=3.57. (The chaotic parts are where there is a vertical gray swath instead of single points.)

    So this stuff is kinda fun. A very similar one is this y= r*cos(x), can you find the bifurcations?

    read up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map
  • sobe86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Seems kind of arbitrary and insignificant though. If we used any other base system then it wouldn't work for 6174.
  • hazlett, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That being said, I must say that one of my least favorite numbers would have to be 452,308,968,347,984,503. It is rarely if ever seen in nature and seldom in the home or office. Agorophobic ?? Perhaps, but definitely mysterious.

    Come Out, 452,308,968,347,984,503, and show yourself, we are all friends here !



  • Stevethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There is nothing significant or insignificant in numbers. Math is the symbolic language that humans made to measure nature, there are no numbers out there, WE made them to understand how it is out there, it's just a helping tool. Every number is special in it's very own right, it can be 3.34212, it can be pi, it can be phi, dig deep enough and you'll find numerical patterns in most of the places, just with different numbers, ratios are mostly what we find again and again.
  • wafflez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2vishnu has 2 arms UltimaNut >_>
  • orangemarmalade, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2and number 4 is also really cool:
    1) pick a word, any word (ie 'strawberries')
    2) how many letters in that word? (12)
    3) repeat for that number (twelve = 6 letters, six = 3, three = 5, five = 4 letters, four = 4 letters)
    4) therefore, everything = 4
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