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What’s Up With Weird Numbers?
An Oddity of Number Theory
Number theory is usually considered to be the most “pure” of all the branches in math. This is debatable, but it comes from the fact that number theory only deals with the integers. No decimals here! It’s also extremely old, dating back to at least 1800 BC, with a Mesopotamian tablet containing a list of Pythagorean Triples (sets of three numbers that satisfy the Pythagorean Theorem) pictured below.
One of the chief concerns of number theory is coming up with concepts for describing numbers and then figuring out why they behave that way. The most common example of this is the prime numbers. These numbers have a very special property; they are only divisibly by themselves and the number 1, and an immense amount of work has been devoted to predicting where prime numbers will appear.
This article is going to focus on another classification called the weird numbers. At first, I was intrigued by the weird numbers because I thought the name was funny. I then realized that they were very interesting for more than just their name! Just like prime numbers, they seem to be hinting at something deeper. Let’s see how they work!
