How does our brain work? How cognitive systems are structured or functioning? One day they could be found out. While reading Major's article we can learn that “Imagining personalities for numbers involves cognitive systems that are linguistic as well as mathematical.”
The story of Taxicab Numbers and how Ramanujan found the uniqueness of number “1729” is as intriguing as how “Goldbach's conjecture “comes into being. After reading Major's article, I couldn’t help wonder if positive integers are impersonalized in Ramanujan’s mind when he studies their patterns and property. And that might give him intuition to realize the relationship between cubes and sums when G. H. Hardy told him the story of this number on the taxicab. We can even assume if he is given other numbers, Ramanujan could also discover their uniqueness mathematically. Since all integers are talking to him.
I would like to introduce these stories to secondary math students. Since this makes mathematics much more fun and student can feel more related. In my class, a new talent like Ramanujan might just need a story to be inspired for lifelong interest or a great math discovery. I will try adding these fun elements naturally when teaching integers and cubes.
Some digit numbers do have personalities for me. Influenced by Chinese culture I like number 6, 8, and 9 and feel they are lucky numbers. In Chinese tradition, each digit number has a meaning. For example, the number three means “life”. It is considered a good number. The number 4 is considered an unlucky number because it sounds like the Chinese character “death”. Normally, I don’t think these symbols have personalities. They are useful and important. I respect their usage and rules.
Very nice! Thanks Cheryl.
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