• peopleproblems@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    51
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    My dad is a retired Math professor.

    The laughter had around this started at Cosmology, then erupted at Game theory and he couldn’t breathe after the last one.

    This is probably one of his most clever comics.

  • Codex@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    3 months ago

    For the final answer, I guess Big Omega, unless you don’t count infinities in which case my answer is getting up and arguing with the professor because "the number of times I can recursively write TREE(TREE(TREE... is just as arbitrary as declaring a biggest theoretical number and assigning it a new symbol.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      47
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      Of course it includes infinities, and when was the last time you saw a postgrad exam whose answers didn’t include an argument with the professor?

      • Codex@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        3 months ago

        “How well you can irl debate me bro on the exam room floor will account for 50% of your final grade.”

    • _stranger_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      3 months ago

      That’s actually the correct answer. If you don’t get angry and start an argument, you fail.

    • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 months ago

      In fact the answer was a series of definitions of new biggest numbers, and you only defined one, instead of defining it, using it for its value of trees, then using that new term for more trees.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 months ago

      “The largest non-impossible ordinal that is less than the number of infinities there are.”

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    3 months ago

    Man, I remember getting the kindergarten question at a point where my older brother had already told me that you can just add more digits and it always gets bigger.

    I was so angry at that question, because what the hell do you want me to do here? I think, I ended up just cramming as many 9s into the box as I could, but that question is almost philosophical.

    Clearly, I’m able to think of an even larger number by cramming one more 9 into there. So, what I’ve written down is always wrong. It is never the largest number that I’m actually able to think of. I’m telling you, I got forced into this life of lies and crime at a young age.

  • MBM@lemmings.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    3 months ago

    2 is pretty big. Oh, or π! That’s probably the biggest number I’ve seen this month.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    1 x ∞

    Simplest way to take a shot at the biggest number without getting into some weird multiple multipliers of infinity.