Posted: Apr 04, 2010 5:28 pm
I have noted that a lot of talk goes on about people's irrational and irrational-seeming belief systems. I am interested in hearing the oddest stories from personal life or historically-verified generally-accepted matters. Then rebuttals can be made or people can just shrug and say Wow. Please don't lie.
I'll start with myself:
1) My biggest thing is a birthday coincidence. Here are ten dates in chronological order in da/mo/yr format (I'll get to what they are, but you may recognize two or three): 03/01/42, 16/02/43, 16/07/45, 06/08/45, 09/08/45, 06/07/64, 16/07/64,
06/08/64, 09/08/65, & 11/05/97. The 1st, 2nd, & 6th are my father's, my mother's, and my own d.o.b. I'm in the USA, so to me these are all 2 days after holidays, and I guess the minor significance of the second holiday--relatively speaking--is made up for a little or a lot by this being the opposite-gender parent from myself. The 3rd-5th are the dates of the Trinity Site nuclear test and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 7th-9th are the d.o.b. of my closest same-generation relatives, for whom I am the sole link in that generation (I have six first cousins, two of these through my father's step-brother, three through his sister, and one through my mother's sister. I knew and know the birth dates only of the three closest in age to me: two of the three sons of my paternal aunt and my maternal aunt's daughter). The 10th is the date that Gary Kasparov lost to the IBM computer Deep Blue in a match (sequence of games) akin to a world championship though not recognized in those terms. You'll note that my cousins' birth dates are anniversaries of the explosions. Furhtermore, my older cousin, the other full cousin, taught me chess and I spent a lot of time using a computer to analyze the game. Even more, my own birthday also links to the third and tenth dates as follows: 7061964=4*1765491 and 6071964=4*1517991. Yet more is that I discovered the date of the Trinity Site test about 3 months after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Kashmir (and I could go on with some of the stuff that was preparatory to my making the full link).
2) 1 was useful in causing me to calculate (365+1/4)^4=17797577732+7^2/2^8. By extending the 7s on the right to get 17797777777.777... and taking the fourth root and subtracting 365.25 you get a string of digits whose first two 2nd millennium dates are 1957 and 1863. Pairing these two dates in a search of Britannica 2001 (CD) gives "Baha'i faith" as one of 20 hits. Placing "Baha'i" in the search gives 19382 hits, because it handles the apostrophe incorrectly (generating all the hits for "i"), and my 5-digit zip code is 19382, and 1938.2 as a date is in between the two days that Hitler bullied the Czechoslovak prime minister and then marched on Czechoslovakia. The zip-code system was also started in the year before I was born. There is quite a bit more about this date stuff that this post won't hold.
3) The very first thread I started on my own is a thread at h2g2. It's numbered as my 7-digit phone number aside from one digit being off by one digit.
Now, I'm not looking for this sort of thing from anyone but myself to this degree, but more along the lines of two others that other people have said:
1) I read of an American mathematician who happened to be in Germany when he ran across another mathematician who lived on the same block in Indiana when they were children, not having known each other then (with a mutual friend as a part of the story).
2) I was told of an occasion when someone lost a prescription contact lens while travelling, and the first person he spoke to was a woman who just happened to have an extra pair with one missing, and the lens was a good match.
So, don't worry about being believed. We here won't take anybody's word for it anyway.
I won't be responding here this week--I have a number of obligations including a long-ass post on pure number coincidences--but I'll be reading what's said if anything.
I'll start with myself:
1) My biggest thing is a birthday coincidence. Here are ten dates in chronological order in da/mo/yr format (I'll get to what they are, but you may recognize two or three): 03/01/42, 16/02/43, 16/07/45, 06/08/45, 09/08/45, 06/07/64, 16/07/64,
06/08/64, 09/08/65, & 11/05/97. The 1st, 2nd, & 6th are my father's, my mother's, and my own d.o.b. I'm in the USA, so to me these are all 2 days after holidays, and I guess the minor significance of the second holiday--relatively speaking--is made up for a little or a lot by this being the opposite-gender parent from myself. The 3rd-5th are the dates of the Trinity Site nuclear test and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 7th-9th are the d.o.b. of my closest same-generation relatives, for whom I am the sole link in that generation (I have six first cousins, two of these through my father's step-brother, three through his sister, and one through my mother's sister. I knew and know the birth dates only of the three closest in age to me: two of the three sons of my paternal aunt and my maternal aunt's daughter). The 10th is the date that Gary Kasparov lost to the IBM computer Deep Blue in a match (sequence of games) akin to a world championship though not recognized in those terms. You'll note that my cousins' birth dates are anniversaries of the explosions. Furhtermore, my older cousin, the other full cousin, taught me chess and I spent a lot of time using a computer to analyze the game. Even more, my own birthday also links to the third and tenth dates as follows: 7061964=4*1765491 and 6071964=4*1517991. Yet more is that I discovered the date of the Trinity Site test about 3 months after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Kashmir (and I could go on with some of the stuff that was preparatory to my making the full link).
2) 1 was useful in causing me to calculate (365+1/4)^4=17797577732+7^2/2^8. By extending the 7s on the right to get 17797777777.777... and taking the fourth root and subtracting 365.25 you get a string of digits whose first two 2nd millennium dates are 1957 and 1863. Pairing these two dates in a search of Britannica 2001 (CD) gives "Baha'i faith" as one of 20 hits. Placing "Baha'i" in the search gives 19382 hits, because it handles the apostrophe incorrectly (generating all the hits for "i"), and my 5-digit zip code is 19382, and 1938.2 as a date is in between the two days that Hitler bullied the Czechoslovak prime minister and then marched on Czechoslovakia. The zip-code system was also started in the year before I was born. There is quite a bit more about this date stuff that this post won't hold.
3) The very first thread I started on my own is a thread at h2g2. It's numbered as my 7-digit phone number aside from one digit being off by one digit.
Now, I'm not looking for this sort of thing from anyone but myself to this degree, but more along the lines of two others that other people have said:
1) I read of an American mathematician who happened to be in Germany when he ran across another mathematician who lived on the same block in Indiana when they were children, not having known each other then (with a mutual friend as a part of the story).
2) I was told of an occasion when someone lost a prescription contact lens while travelling, and the first person he spoke to was a woman who just happened to have an extra pair with one missing, and the lens was a good match.
So, don't worry about being believed. We here won't take anybody's word for it anyway.
I won't be responding here this week--I have a number of obligations including a long-ass post on pure number coincidences--but I'll be reading what's said if anything.