Have shiny, happy fun today.

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He sure seems to have a lot of those lately ;)

Happy birthday Claude! All the best.

Well... The one constant through all the years, Cruel, has been baseball Claude's birthday. :)

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I didn't get you anything.

He sure seems to have a lot of those lately ;)

ZOMG HE IS SO OLD.

I think he has more birthdays than anyone else.

;-)

Happy Birthday, Claude! Hope you have a grand time!

NSFW

Happy birthday!

;)

Pretty soon you'll have the age pre-requisite met to take his job!

Happy Birthday Mr. Claude.

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Well, except for people who make age jokes.

Oh, wait, that was ALL OF YOU

(Been a good day. :) Far from home, on the east coast… coming to an end... )

How much do you want to bet that P.A. message won't go off at all? ;-)

Oops.

I heard your birthday message in the tower about a week ago. I'm just wondering when I'm gonna hear mine.

Happy B-day Claude. Thanks for setting all this up over the years.

Knuth's up-arrow notation can just about handle Wu's age. =P

I never got far enough in math to learn this stuff on my own. I was briefly introduced to that once by a math grass student in a physics class. My question that he couldn't answer, and that I can't answer myself after checking the wikipedia page, is why not just use exponents?

I never got far enough in math to learn this stuff on my own. I was briefly introduced to that once by a math grass student in a physics class. My question that he couldn't answer, and that I can't answer myself after checking the wikipedia page, is why not just use exponents?

I'm not sure myself. I think it might have a lot to do with computing, since Donald Knuth is a computer scientist and specialized in computational algorithms. Or it might simply be more intuitive to read or type with a keyboard.

Once you understand the system, 3(Arrow)(Arrow)4 is a lot easier to grasp than 3^7625597484987.

I never got far enough in math to learn this stuff on my own. I was briefly introduced to that once by a math grass student in a physics class. My question that he couldn't answer, and that I can't answer myself after checking the wikipedia page, is why not just use exponents?

Certain numbers, like Graham's number, are too big to even be represented with exponents.

I never got far enough in math to learn this stuff on my own. I was briefly introduced to that once by a math grass student in a physics class. My question that he couldn't answer, and that I can't answer myself after checking the wikipedia page, is why not just use exponents?

I'm not sure myself. I think it might have a lot to do with computing, since Donald Knuth is a computer scientist and specialized in computational algorithms. Or it might simply be more intuitive to read or type with a keyboard.

Once you understand the system, 3(Arrow)(Arrow)4 is a lot easier to grasp than 3^7625597484987.

Yeah, but surely it's identical to just saying 3^3^3^3.

That said, I just read the article again for about 15 minutes. The utility appears to be when that second number increases. For example, 3 arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow 76.

I don't like mathematics with no applicability to physics, and with the number of atoms being approximately 10^80, I saw no utility in the notation.

Do computers use numbers this large very often?

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Computers can only handle mathematical operations up to a point (and even before that point, there are big limitations in how large one operator is compared to the other).

I mean, you can certainly visualize larger numbers at will, but the computer won't do anything with it.

Since Mig posted the thing already, I figured I'm now safe to post our contribution separately.

Happy Birthday, Claude!

"I wish I was my titan."

Great video.

So the announcement in the tower is actually correct for once. Happy bday!

This really should be archived. Cool to see all the peeps!

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In case ppl were wondering why there was a random guy holding a tuba in the vid:

Oh, man! That's awesome.

Can you do the rest of the song? :D

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Louis Wu is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life

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Hope you had a good one, big guy

Wow, thanks to Nico, my 91 year old father got to say happy birthday too!

(For all you youngsters out there, he's the voice of the surly dwarf, and we just watched the Seahawks beat the 49's yesterday!)

Computers can only handle mathematical operations up to a point

I mean, you can certainly visualize larger numbers at will, but the computer won't do anything with it.

There's nothing in particular preventing you from representing huge numbers on a computer. Such representations couldn't be used "natively" in the execution units, but it's not like the human brain has streamlined up-arrow registers and execution pipelines either.

Speed is a potential issue if you're going reeeaaaaallllyyyy big and need an exact answer, but with billions of 64-bit ops per second available, you can get a decent amount of work done in reasonable time.

(and even before that point, there are big limitations in how large one operator is compared to the other).

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here.

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Wow, thanks to Nico, my 91 year old father got to say happy birthday too!

(For all you youngsters out there, he's the voice of the surly dwarf, and we just watched the Seahawks beat the 49's yesterday!)

Spectacular.

There's nothing in particular preventing you from representing huge numbers on a computer. Such representations couldn't be used "natively" in the execution units, but it's not like the human brain has streamlined up-arrow registers and execution pipelines either.

That's what I meant.

Speed is a potential issue if you're going reeeaaaaallllyyyy big and need an exact answer, but with billions of 64-bit ops per second available, you can get a decent amount of work done in reasonable time.

And that is the long answer. :p

(and even before that point, there are big limitations in how large one operator is compared to the other).

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here.

Was talking about how you can't sum 2e63 with 2e-63 and have the answer in a single byte without losing precision, even when the system is capable of storing up to 2e63 and down to 2e-63.

This happened:

Still, happy belated birthday.

Was talking about how you can't sum 2e63 with 2e-63 and have the answer in a single byte without losing precision, even when the system is capable of storing up to 2e63 and down to 2e-63.

RIP mantissa D:

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