Once you start looking for "interesting" ids you can find all sorts of reasons to find them. 2^20, the next prime, Fibonacci numbers, etc.

Perhaps for any given point in a increasing number series there is an infinite number of interesting numbers just around the corner.

Sigh.

It's the sieve of Giraffes

> It's the sieve of Giraffes

Or the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

Every number is interesting somehow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_number - and the quote: "Every positive integer is one of Ramanujan's personal friends."—J. E. Littlewood, upon hearing of the taxicab incident.

From Littlewood's (wonderful) "Mathematician's Miscellany":

I read in the proof-sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said ..."

(What had happened was that Hardy had received the remark in silence and with poker face, and I wrote it off as a dud. I later taxed Hardy with this habit; on which he replied: "Well, what is one to do, is one always to be saying 'damned good'?" To which the answer is "yes".)

Until now I've always taken these paragraphs as saying that it wasn't really Littlewood who made the remark about Ramanujan, but on rereading it I've changed my mind: I think the point is that he did say it, and was annoyed that Hardy didn't credit him, and made a little joke about it which Hardy interpreted correctly. Maybe I'm overinterpreting. Littlewood's second paragraph doesn't quite make sense to me (i.e., what it proffers as an explanation doesn't seem to explain very well) on either interpretation. If he didn't say it, then (having seen that second set of proof sheets) he and Hardy effectively conspired to credit him for something he hadn't said, which would be quite a breach of academic etiquette...

I've never heard "sieve of giraffes" before, and I'm coming up empty in searches for it. Can you explain?

Sure thing.

It's a word-play off three concepts. The First is the famous filter for finding primes, the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Sieve of Eratosthenes

Then there is the concept of "Interesting Numbers" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox (every number is interesting).

Finally RiderOfGiraffes' nickname, since they've demonstrated to me that once you start looking at those little commentid fields it does interesting things to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Sorry so obtuse. My head's been down in code all day long. If I could post in binary it might be easier :)

Well, I figured out the first and third parts. So the the Sieve of Giraffes returns every number. I guess the next step is to include it in the Java library.

Still a loooooong way to go... but the item IDs aren't limited to 32 bit ints are they? ;)

Are you kidding? HN is written in Arc, not C++.

Oh no, we've brought religion into the mix!