mathNEWS Production Nights are breeding grounds for weird conversations. From discussions about the meaning of the writer's names to miscellaneous Simpsons quotes, there's rarely a dull moment. For some unknown reason, a former editor (who doesn't advertise himself) started to talk about how his age is no longer a perfect number and, by extension, his days may become less pleasant.
Most of you probably already know what a perfect number is — an integer whose divisors (except the number itself) add up to that number. (I hope I'm not confusing anybody.) The first few are 6, 28, 496, 8128, ... (I guess you probably figured out that past-editor's age by now). [He's 7!! — AbsentEd]
Being a guy who loves to fiddle with numbers, I tried to look for times where my age is a perfect number. If one counts age in years, then I am more than a decade past my first perfect year and years away from the next one.
Wanting to find a perfect time for me than comes sooner, I decided to check my age in terms of months. Obviously, I'm more than 28 months old (since I haven't mastered time travel, being 6 years old before being 28 months old is still a dream). So I checked to next perfect number, 496. Unfortunately, 496 months = 41 years. So I guess I have to wait two decades before my have another perfect month.
Okay, maybe I was a little greedy to ask for a perfect year or month. A day would be fine. So I decided to check when is my next perfect day. A 496-day old me is a distant memory (actually, I have no recollection of that day). So I look for the day when I would be 8128 days old. Lo and behold! I turn 8128 days old on April 17th, 2003. To most people, this is just an ordinary day; but to most senior mathies, this is a day to rejoice. It is on this day this year (2002) that a long-time nemesis — the Descartes Contest was finally slayed.
So if you have a day when nothing, ohh nothing is going right (sorry, James Taylor), don't dispair. Your perfect hour, where everything goesyour way, may not be that far away.
Jason "Screaming for a perfect day" Lau
with ideas from an ex-editor who doesn't advertise himself