Comments by "Gavin Tillman" (@gavintillman1884) on "Numberphile" channel.

  1. Coming back to the binary thing. I know it’s going off at a tangent but I liked the ternary thing where you can count a weight negatively or positively (as you can put it in the same pan or opposite pan to thing you are weighing, on a pair of scales). So with 1,3,9,27 lb you can weigh any integer number of lb up to 40. Highly practical!
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  2. Don’t know if it leads to the “same” infinitesimals but I know JHC’s surreal numbers include these (and infinities). Must take a look at NSA
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  3. I’d like to call primorials primordials.
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  4. I’m British and never found odd numbers going up and even numbers going down. They may be out of step but would both be going up. Or both down. Especially London where numbers tend to increase as you move away from Charing Cross.
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  5. Definitely want the same number of sides on each die!
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  6. Given that each location - left/centre/right - defines a ternary number 0/1/2 - and that there are three deals each yielding a ternary number - presumably the trick still works if, instead of dealing 21 cards, 3^3=27 are dealt.
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