Alex’s Adventures in Numberland (80 page)

^*
In fact, numbers need to get closer in a certain way for the scale to be logarithmic. For a fuller
discussion of the scale
,

^*
A group of eight divinities in the Indian epic the
Mahabharata
.

^*
The mathematical constant
e
is an ir
rational number beginning 2.718281828, which Gregory Chudnovsky calls ‘twice Tolstoy’ since the Russian novelist was born in 1828. It has no relation to Einstein’s equation E=mc
²
, where E means energy.

^*
In the original, the spelt figure is mistakenly written 2301.

2">
†
Egyptian unit of volume.

^*
Using the convention that 0
⁰
= 1, since if 0
⁰
= 0 the number would collapse immediately.

^*
The definition of the sequence
appears as an
appendix
.

^*
You might think that lines of lat
itude are parallel to the equator. This is not true because the lines of latitude (with the exception of the equator) are not straight lines, and only straight lines can be parallel to each other. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, which is why a plane flying b
etween New York and Madrid, which are both on the same line of latitude, does not fly along the line of latitude but instead has a path that looks curved when seen on a two-dimensional map.