Comments by "EebstertheGreat" (@EebstertheGreat) on "The Levine Sequence - Numberphile" video.

  1. I like to imagine Neil Sloane is the outcast of mathematicians. Mathematicians will be holding some sort of conference featuring important-sounding lectures like "Discriminants of modular forms of doubly even weight with soluble theta functions." Then Neil shows up and says, "brace yourself, this is gonna be big." He sprints to one of the dozens of chalkboards on rails and starts jotting down 2, 2, 3, 4, 7, smirks, and asks the crowd, "looks easy, right?" The organizers are calling security, but security refuses to come and face the mighty Neil Sloane face-to-face. "42, 213, 2837," the crowd begins to suspect Neil is trolling them. But he has something much greater planned. "175450." The crowd gasps. "139759600." Oh no. Has he really done it? "6837625106787." Security begins to file in sheepishly, covering up their badges to look like paying guests watching the master at work. Outside the arena, cold pedestrians huddle by speakers to witness the genius speak. "You want one more?" he asks the adoring crowd. They get big! "266437144916648607844." Thunderous applause breaks out across the block and up to a mile away. People in neighboring time zones spontaneously start to clap, though they don't know why. "They keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger" he tries to exclaim above the uproar, but his words can no longer be heard. Throngs of math-lovers lift Neil above the floor while shouting "y⟼y+1." They carry him off to their altar to practice uncomputable atrocities as he cries, "what are these numbers?" OK that got kind of dark, but you get the idea.
    4