One*

1 (one) is a number, numeral, and the name of the glyph representing that number. It represents a single entity, the unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of "unit length" is a line segment of length 1.

The glyph used today in the Western world to represent the number 1, a vertical line, often with a serif at the top and sometimes a short horizontal line at the bottom, traces its roots back to the Indians, who wrote 1 as a horizontal line, like the way in which it is written in Chinese script. The Gupta wrote it as a curved line, and the Nagari sometimes added a small circle on the left (rotated a quarter turn to the right, this 9-look-alike became the present day numeral 1 in the Gujarati and Punjabi scripts). The Nepali also rotated it to the right, but kept the circle small.^[1] This eventually became the top serif in the modern numeral, but the occasional short horizontal line at the bottom probably originates from similarity with the Roman numeral I. In some European countries (e.g., Germany) the little serif at the top is sometimes extended into a long upstroke, sometimes as long as the vertical line, which can lead to confusion with the glyph for seven in other countries. Where the 1 is written with a long upstroke, the number 7 has a horizontal stroke through the vertical line.

*Thank you, Wikipedia.

1 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Two*

Two has many properties in mathematics.^[1] An integer is called even if it is divisible by 2. For integers written in a numeral system based on an even number, such as decimal and hexadecimal, divisibility by 2 is easily tested by merely looking at the one's place digit. If it is even, then the whole number is even. In particular, when written in the decimal system, all multiples of 2 will end in 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8.

The glyph used today in the Western world to represent the number 2 traces its roots back to India, the Brahmin Indians, who wrote 2 as two horizontal lines (it is still written that way in modern Chinese and Japanese). The Gupta dynasty rotated the two lines 45 degrees, making them diagonal, and sometimes also made the top line shorter and made its bottom end curve towards the center of the bottom line. Apparently for speed, the Nagari (the original script of Hindi, the main language of India) started making the top line more like a curve and connecting to the bottom line. The Ghubar Arabs made the bottom line completely vertical, and now the glyph looked like a dotless closing question mark. Restoring the bottom line to its original horizontal position, but keeping the top line as a curve that connects to the bottom line leads to our modern glyph.

• The atomic number of helium.
• Group 2 in the Periodic table of the elements consists of the alkaline earth metals whose usual valence is +2.
• Period 2 in the Periodic table consists of the eight elements lithium through neon.

*Thank you, Wikipedia.

2 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Three*

Three is the first odd prime number,^[1] and the second smallest prime. It is both the first Fermat prime (2²ⁿ + 1) and the first Mersenne prime (2² − 1), as well as the first lucky prime. However, it's the second Sophie Germain prime, the second Mersenne prime exponent, the second factorial prime (2! + 1), the second Lucas prime, the second Stern prime.

Three is often the largest number written with as many lines as the number represents. The Romans tired of writing 4 as IIII, but to this day 3 is written as three lines in Roman and Chinese numerals. This was the way the Brahmin Indians wrote it, and the Gupta made the three lines more curved. The Nagari started rotating the lines clockwise and ending each line with a slight downward stroke on the right. Eventually they made these strokes connect with the lines below, and evolved it to a character that looks very much like a modern 3 with an extra stroke at the bottom. It was the Western Ghubar Arabs who finally eliminated the extra stroke and created our modern 3. (The "extra" stroke, however, was very important to the Eastern Arabs, and they made it much larger, while rotating the strokes above to lie along a horizontal axis, and to this day Eastern Arabs write a 3 that looks like a mirrored 7 with ridges on its top line): ٣

Three is also a magic number:


3 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Four*

Four is the smallest composite number, its proper divisors being 1 and 2. Four is also a highly composite number.

Representing 1, 2 and 3 in as many lines as the number represents worked well and owes its origins to India. The Brahmin Indians simplified 4 by joining its four lines into a cross that looks like our modern plus sign. The Sunga would add a horizontal line on top of the numeral, and the Kshatrapa and Pallava evolved the numeral to a point where speed of writing was a secondary concern. The Arab's 4 still had the early concept of the cross, but for the sake of efficiency, was made in one stroke by connecting the "western" end to the "northern" end; the "eastern" end was finished off with a curve. The Europeans dropped the finishing curve and gradually made the numeral less cursive, ending up with a glyph very close to the original Brahmin cross.

Four is the atomic number of beryllium

4 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

*Thank you, Wikipedia.

Five*

Five is the only prime number to end in the digit 5, because all other numbers written with a 5 in the ones-place under the decimal system are multiples of five. As a consequence of this, 5 is in base 10 a 1-automorphic number.

The evolution of our modern glyph for five cannot be neatly traced back to the Brahmin Indians quite the same way it can for 1 to 4. Later on the Kushana and Gupta Indians had among themselves several different glyphs which bear no resemblance to the modern glyph. The Nagari and Punjabi took these glyphs and all came up with glyphs that look like a lowercase "h" rotated 180°. The Ghubar Arabs transformed the glyph in several different ways, coming up with glyphs that look more like 4s or 3s than 5s.^[2] It was from those characters that the Europeans finally came up with the modern 5, though from purely graphical evidence, it would be much easier to conclude that our modern 5 came from the Khmer. The Khmer glyph develops from the Kushana/Ândhra/Gupta numeral, its shape looking like a modern day version with an extended swirled 'tail'.

The denomination of Canadian paper money bearing a portrait of Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's seventh Prime Minister.

5 is the uniform number of Hall of Fame Baseball players Luke Appling, George Brett, Lou Boudreau, Hank Greenberg, Johnny Bench, Joe DiMaggio, and Brooks Robinson.

*-Thank you Wikipedia.

5 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Six*

Six is a unitary perfect number, a harmonic divisor number and a highly composite number. The next highly composite number is 12.

The evolution of our modern glyph for 6 appears rather simple when compared with that for the other numerals. Our modern 6 can be traced back to the Brahmins of India, who wrote it in one stroke like a cursive lowercase e rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Gradually, the upper part of the stroke (above the central squiggle) became more curved, while the lower part of the stroke (below the central squiggle) became straighter. The Ghubar Arabs dropped the part of the stroke below the squiggle. From there, the European evolution to our modern 6 was very straightforward, aside from a flirtation with a glyph that looked more like an uppercase G.^[3]

Retired number of former baseball players Stan Musial, Tony Lazzeri, Al Kaline, Tony Oliva and Steve Garvey.

*-Thank you, Wikipedia.

This #6 tried to retire:
6 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Seven*

When rolling two standard six-sided dice, it is the sum of any two opposite sides on a standard six-sided die. It has a 6 in 36 (or 1/6th) probability of being rolled (1–6, 6–1, 2–5, 5–2, 3–4, or 4–3), the greatest of any number.

In the beginning, various Hindus wrote 7 more or less in one stroke as a curve that looks like an uppercase J vertically inverted. The western Ghubar Arabs' main contribution was to make the longer line diagonal rather than straight, though they showed some tendencies to making the character more rectilinear. The eastern Arabs developed the character from a 6-look-alike into an uppercase V-look-alike. Both modern Arab forms influenced the European form, a two-stroke character consisting of a horizontal upper line joined at its right to a line going down to the bottom left corner, a line that is slightly curved in some font variants. As is the case with the European glyph, the Cham and Khmer glyph for 7 also evolved to look like their glyph for 1, though in a different way, so they were also concerned with making their 7 more different. For the Khmer this often involved adding a horizontal line above the glyph.^[2] This is analogous to the horizontal stroke through the middle that is sometimes used in handwriting in the Western world but which is almost never used in computer fonts. This horizontal stroke is, however, important to distinguish the glyph for seven from the glyph for one in writings that use a long upstroke in the glyph for one.

*-Thank you, Wikipedia.

Not from Wikipedia...

The best quote from the movie Seven.

What's in the box?

7 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Eight*

Have to use this...even though I don't know what the term means.

8 and 9 form a Ruth-Aaron pair under the second definition in which repeated prime factors are counted as often as they occur.

Ruth-Aaron pair? A math person who is a baseball fan?

In the beginning, various groups in India wrote eight more or less in one stroke as a curve that looks like an uppercase H with the bottom half of the left line and the upper half of the right line removed. At one point this glyph came close to looking like our modern five. With the western Ghubar Arabs, the similarity of the glyph to five was banished by connecting the beginning and the end of stroke together, and it was only a matter of the Europeans rounding the glyph that led to our modern eight.^[2]

Eight is the retired jersey number of Baseball Hall of Fame players Cal Ripken, Jr., Joe Morgan, Willie Stargell, Carl Yastrzemski, and Yogi Berra.

*-Thank you, Wikipedia

8 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Nine*

According to Georges Ifrah, the origin of the 9 integers can be attributed to the ancient Indian civilization, and was adopted by subsequent civilizations in conjunction with the 0.^[6]

In the beginning, various Indians wrote 9 similar to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshtrapa, Andhra and Gupta started curving the bottom vertical line coming up with a 3-look-alike. The Nagari continued the bottom stroke to make a circle and enclose the 3-look-alike, in much the same way that the @ character encircles a lowercase a. As time went on, the enclosing circle became bigger and its line continued beyond the circle downwards, as the 3-look-alike became smaller. Soon, all that was left of the 3-look-alike was a squiggle. The Arabs simply connected that squiggle to the downward stroke at the middle and subsequent European change was purely cosmetic.

9 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

*-Thank you, Wikipedia.

Ten*

10 is the smallest noncototient, a number that can not be expressed as the difference between any integer and the total number of coprimes below it.

10 is the smallest positive integer requiring three syllables.

Ten is the eighth Perrin number, preceded in the sequence by 5, 5, 7.

A polygon with ten sides is a decagon.

10 is the atomic number of neon.

In ancient Rome, the killing of one in ten soldiers in a cohort was the punishment for cowardice or mutiny; or, one-tenth of the able-bodied men in a village as a form of retribution, thus causing a labor shortage and threat of starvation in agrarian societies. This was called decimation.

The official residence of the British Prime Minister is at 10 Downing Street.

There are 10 provinces in Canada.

The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys 21–17 in Super Bowl X.

I should have used this video yesterday:



10 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

*-Thank you, Wikipedia.

Channeling

As I was driving home from the Oshkosh Business Expo last night, I began to have a few thoughts. It began when it took me about ten minutes to scrape the snow/ice hybrid off the car.

I take that back, it actually began during the Expo when I received a call to let me know that the Appleton East at Oshkosh North basketball game I was scheduled to work had been postponed. This was to be the last broadcast on TWC Sports 32. But, now we won't be doing the game.

After the car had been mostly cleared, I started on the trek home. What normally would have taken 20 minutes, took over an hour and 15 minutes.

The snow had finally gotten to me and as I pulled into the carport of the trailer, I began channeling a speech from an 80's movie with a few alterations.


I'm not going to stand up here and give you a lecture about the values of snow and the change of seasons. I just have two simple words for you: No More.

As long as I'm here, I can promise you one thing: That I will do everything in my power to enforce my painfully simple rule of NO MORE!

I know what you're thinking. You gotta live with me and I gotta live with you. Well, it will be a whole lot simpler if you all join with me and say:

NO MORE!

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go to the corner bar and build a pyramid out of shot glasses. Or go in to the ballpark and sell, sell, sell.

41 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

Just a couple of friendly reminders

Reminder #1: In case you didn't check in this weekend, the Timber Rattlers are getting a new video scoreboard.

It's going to be...what's the word? AWESOME!

Reminder #2: 80 dies insquequo Oris Dies

Drawing nothing

Good morning, all.

I've been looking in the usual places for something to post, but I've got nothing today. It must be something to do with the weather. Right, Captain?

Here's a little winter haiku to get you through the day:

The snow on the ground
freezes and baseball seems far
HOLY SMOKES it's cold!

83 dies insquequo Oris Dies

Aliquantulus Latin in a ignavus Imbuo

Things to do. Places to go. People to meet. Recliner to sit in. TV to watch.

Two of the above sentences are true.

More tomorrow. Much more. For right now, though.

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It's a number of some significance

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What's in a number?

One hundred is the square of 10 (in scientific notation it is written as 10²). The standard SI prefix for a hundred is "hecto-".

One hundred is the basis of percentages (literally "per hundred"), with 100% being a full amount.

It is the sum of the first nine prime numbers, as well as the sum of two prime numbers (47 + 53, 17 +83, 3 + 97, 41 + 59), and the sum of the cubes of the first four integers (100 = 1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³). Also, 2⁶ + 6² = 100, thus 100 is a Leyland number.

One hundred is also an 18-gonal number. It is divisible by the number of primes below it, 25 in this case. But it can not be expressed as the difference between any integer and the total of coprimes below it, making it a noncototient. However, it can be expressed as a sum of some of its divisors, making it a semiperfect number.

100 is a Harshad number in base 10, and also in base 4, and in that base it is a self-descriptive number.

Oh, there's a bit more at that wikipedia link.

But, the main thing today is 100 days until Timber Rattler Opening Day 2009.

100 dies insquequo Oris Dies.