Strong law of small numbers

For other uses, see Law of small numbers (disambiguation).

In mathematics, the "strong law of small numbers" is the humorous law that proclaims, in the words of Richard K. Guy (1988):[1]

There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them.

In other words, any given small number appears in far more contexts than may seem reasonable, leading to many apparently surprising coincidences in mathematics, simply because small numbers appear so often and yet are so few. Earlier (1980) this "law" was reported by Martin Gardner.[2] Guy's subsequent 1988 paper of the same title gives numerous examples in support of this thesis. (This paper earned him the MAA Lester R. Ford Award.)

  1. ^ Guy, Richard K. (1988). "The strong law of small numbers" (PDF). The American Mathematical Monthly. 95 (8): 697–712. doi:10.2307/2322249. JSTOR 2322249.
  2. ^ Gardner, Martin (December 1980). "Patterns in primes are a clue to the strong law of small numbers". Mathematical Games. Scientific American. 243 (6): 18–28. JSTOR 24966473.