In Mathematics
496 is most notable for being a perfect number, and one of the earliest numbers to be recognized as such. As a perfect number, it is tied to the Mersenne prime 31, 25 - 1, with 24 ( 25 - 1 ) yielding 496. Also related to its being a perfect number, 496 is a harmonic divisor number, since the number of proper divisors of 496 divided by the sum of the reciprocals of its divisors, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 62, 124, 248 and 496, (the harmonic mean), yields an integer, 5 in this case.
A triangular number and a hexagonal number, 496 is also a centered nonagonal number and a centered 11-gonal number. Being the 31st triangular number, 496 is the smallest counterexample to the hypothesis that one more than an even indexed triangular number is a prime number. It is the largest happy number less than 500.
There is no solution to the equation φ(x) = 496, making 496 a nontotient.
E8 has real dimension 496.
Read more about this topic: 496 (number)
Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Why does man freeze to death trying to reach the North Pole? Why does man drive himself to suffer the steam and heat of the Amazon? Why does he stagger his mind with the mathematics of the sky? Once the question mark has arisen in the human brain the answer must be found, if it takes a hundred years. A thousand years.”
—Walter Reisch (1903–1963)