Talk:Graham's number

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voorts (talk/contributions) 20:07, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Candidate to disprove the Collatz conjecture?

WP:NOTFORUM The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Powers of 2 become exponentially rare at large numbers and Graham's number is a huge number, that is not a power of 2. Is Graham's number a candidate to disprove the Collatz conjecture? 94.31.89.138 (talk) 12:16, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

It can be difficult. The last 3 digits of Graham's number are 387. So multiplying it by 3 and adding 1 will give you a number ending in 162, which is divisible by 2 but not by 4. Then divide it by 2. I can't continue the sequence right now. Georgia guy (talk) 14:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

There's a contradiction here

If Graham's number is said to be the largest number appearing in a published mathematical proof, why is it also claimed to originate from an unpublished paper by Graham? At this point, the latter seems unverifiable, and the upper bound provided in Graham's original paper is much smaller than the current Graham's number. It seems the only statement that is proven and verifiable is that 'Graham's number was published by Gardner.' Phyrion (talk) 09:31, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

"The largest integer that has an entry on Wikipedia" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect The largest integer that has an entry on Wikipedia has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 May 5 § The largest integer that has an entry on Wikipedia until a consensus is reached. --Bumpf said this! ^{ooh clicky clicky!} [insert witty meta-text on wiki-sigs here] 03:32, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Skewes

@JayBeeEll: I don't think having to go into the details of the distinction between the different Skewes numbers is useful or warranted in the lead of another number's article. As-written, the lead made no such distinction and the article on Skewes makes no such distinction either. Jasper Deng (talk) 17:00, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

The lead of Skewes number says The name is sometimes also applied to either of the large number bounds which Skewes found; the referrent of this phrase is the numbers $e^{e^{e^{79}}}$ and $e^{e^{e^{e^{7.705}}}}$, found in the first section of the article following the introduction. Indeed it would make no sense to spend any words in this article explaining the minutae of these distinctions; it is enough that Skewes's number is a named large number that Graham's number is much larger than. --JBL (talk) 23:46, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think the mention of Skewes' number seems fairly gratuitous here. It's much more germane that Skewes' original bound was a rather large number that was introduced explicitly for the purposes of an effective bound on a problem. That's much more relevant to Graham's number than whether it is "big" relative to Graham's number or a googolplex, or any other number. "Moser's number" (if that even is a real thing) feels like even less relevant here, being just a notation made up for the purposes of expressing the sizes of certain large numbers. I think the issue could be avoided by removing Moser, and saying something more substantive about Skewes. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:18, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes this is very reasonable, thanks. --JBL (talk) 17:28, 11 May 2026 (UTC)