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.
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Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“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)