Speakur

Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

taxicab number

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.60 in modern English

Syllables
taxi-cab num-ber
IPA
28
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
3
Syllables
11
Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The nth taxicab number, typically denoted Ta(n) or Taxicab(n), is the smallest number that can be expressed as a sum of two positive algebraic cubes in n distinct ways.

Etymology

From an anecdote of the mathematician G. H. Hardy, who went to visit Srinivasa Ramanujan in a taxicab number 1729. Hardy suggested that the number seemed unremarkable, whereupon Ramanujan identified it as having this mathematical property.

Inflected Forms

taxicab numbers (plural)

Synonyms

Ramanujan-Hardy number

Questions

What does taxicab number mean?
The nth taxicab number, typically denoted Ta(n) or Taxicab(n), is the smallest number that can be expressed as a sum of two positive algebraic cubes in n distinct ways.
Where does taxicab number come from?
From an anecdote of the mathematician G. H. Hardy, who went to visit Srinivasa Ramanujan in a taxicab number 1729. Hardy suggested that the number seemed unremarkable, whereupon Ramanujan identified it as having this mathematical property.

How to pronounce taxicab number

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