Thursday 11 August 2011

Numbers and Letters

I came across an interesting little factoid recently: the number four is the only number which has the same number of letters in its spelling as its definition. This may be true, but that sparked off another idea. How about equations?

The first I thought of was THREE TIMES FIVE. Fourteen characters without counting spaces - so close! I went higher - SEVENTY-TWO DIVIDED BY THREE. Twenty-five - again, off by one. If I didn't count the hyphen, it would be correct, but "seventy two" is so ungrammatical. My grammar sensibilities did allow "SEVENTY-TWO DIVIDE BY THREE", which had the correct number of characters.

In this vein, I found several more.

SIXTY-SIX DIVIDE BY THREE
SIXTY-NINE DIVIDE BY THREE
FIVE MULTIPLIED BY FOUR
TWENTY MINUS FIVE
TWELVE PLUS THREE
THIRTY-FOUR MINUS TWELVE
THIRTY TIMES TEN TO THE POWER OF ZERO


Okay, I admit I cheated a little with the last one.

New one! π ROUNDED TO THE TENTH PLACE TIMES TEN


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