Talk:Smith number

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Contents 1 My Rationale For Merging 2 Telephone numbers 3 Basketball Court Length 4 Reference?

[edit] My Rationale For Merging

When I first drafted this article, I had no idea that there was already an article on the subject at Smith numbers. Obviously, one of them had to become a redirect to the other. But which one? The plural form one was older, its first draft dating back to August 30, 2003. But the singular one was more in line with the convention for so many other articles on kinds of numbers, for example, perfect number, triangular number, Keith number, super-Poulet number. Number articles with the title in the plural form are the exception, rather than the rule.

Also, I should explain why I didn't like the examples given in the older article. To select 666 and 1776 out of so many other available examples strikes me as being, intentional or not, an anti-American POV. There ought to be places to express this POV, but a Wikipedia article on an abstract mathematical concept should not be one of them.

Nevertheless I'm very appreciative of the efforts of the writers of the older article, User:Kwantus, User:Fredrik and User:SGBailey. I learned the things about Smith numbers that I had been wanting to know (such as why "Smith"?) and I say thanks to those writers. PrimeFan 21:31, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

All I did to the old article was fix a link, but thank you anyway ;) Fredrik 23:26, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

You're welcome. PrimeFan 20:39, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Telephone numbers

Smith numbers were named by Albert Wilansky of Lehigh University for his brother-in-law Harold Smith, who noticed the property in his phone number (4937775).

How bored was he????? sjorford →•← 14:54, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe he was trying to figure out a way to remember the phone number. As I grow older, my memory fades, but my mental computing ability remains undiminished. I can't remember anyone's phone number, but I can remember, for example, that my hunting buddy Keith's phone number is a concatenation of two consecutive Keith numbers plus a perfect number.

And just for the heck of it, I should mention that the sum of the digits in Harold Smith's phone number is 42. PrimeFan 18:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Basketball Court Length

The end of the article contains the line "There are 94 feet from one end of a basketball court to the other end (from basket to basket)." I'm not sure how this is relevant to the content of the article (except for the fact that "94" happens to be a Smith number, although that fact isn't mentioned here). Is there some reason this text has been included? 172.193.167.184 23:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC) It seems to be wrong as well accroding to basketball. Rich Farmbrough 20:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reference?

It is believed that about 3% of any million consecutive integers are Smith numbers. This seems unlikely. Rich Farmbrough 14:58, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that's something I copied from the old Smith numbers article (now a redirect) without questioning it. It's not mentioned in Mathworld's article. We'll have to look at the history of the redirected article to see if we can find who originally wrote that and what their source was. PrimeFan 15:45, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

"Fascinating" implies that smith number get rarer, and sttes only an average denisty of 2.41% for the first 10^10 integers. So I took it out. Rich Farmbrough 20:22, 3 November 2005 (UTC)