On Dec 28, 4:44 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this- cybersource.com.au> wrote: > On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:50:11 -0800, Mensanator wrote: > > I routinely use large numbers in my Collatz Conjecture work. > > > Really large. As in a quarter million bits. > > That's not large.
Perhaps not in the absolute sense. But it's large compared to 32-bit or 64-bit integers. Probably most people's applications don't come anywhere near the limit of what can be represented in long integers. Numbers near such a limit are "large" for practical purposes. > *THIS* is a large number: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham's_number Right. And if I were ice fishing on the retention pond near my house and someone came up and said "You know, blue whales can achieve a length of up to 108 ft.", he would leave in a basket. > > Unless you need special notation merely to describe how to generate the > number, it's not a large number. I'm only interested in numbers I can represent in memory and run through the Collatz process. Interesting as they are, these truly "large" numbers are of no use to me. > > -- > Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
