For a long time I've been studying the etymology and history of math words (and other things I thought were fun) and recording what I have found at my MathWords web page. A very amateur contribution, but a labor of love that has found its way into a few nice corners of math study at different levels... And today I added my 999th term... and now the quandary begins; What should be number 1000 to celebrate the moment. (to be honest, when I had 100, I really figured I pretty much had the landscape covered... wow... )
I would like it to somehow relate to the number itself, but I have used up all the ones I know.. SOOOOOooooo dear reader, have you any suggestions? Something profound. Something fitting for the moment of "chilioi-ness" (the root which gave us kilo, except the ending, I made that part up).
The world awaits.... History may yet hold a place for you as the one who first suggested this momentus term... Full credit in print, my gratitude, (and almost certainly a pot-load of temporary fame) will be yours.
5 comments:
I'm drawing a blank for 1000. But after that...
I notice you do not have the knight's tour, perfect for 1001.
Jonathan
Ah, you are missing the Riemann Hypothesis, and I see nothing about P - NP complete
(millenium problems)
Jonathan
Jonathan,
Of course, Millennium problems, problems for a thousand years... how perfect, and leading into 1001, 1002 etc for the problems themselves...(maybe knight's tour should be 1003 or something, but definitely it should be in there...
Thanks loads
Knights != Nights
1001 of which made a pretty cool story
If you don't already have it somewhere, how about when/how the suffix 'illion' came about for changing number names at multiples of 1000? (Overlooking the 1000000 factor that the British use, of couse!) Thus, we have the names million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, etc. that all end with 'illion'.
Dave L. Renfro
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