Welcome to 2025, and I can't wait to see what exciting and incredible geekery the new year brings. While ‘Nerd News’ typically skews toward the latest in AI and technology, most of you will know I’m also quite partial to mathematical trivia and general nerdery 🤓
To celebrate the New Year, I’m going old school and dedicating this entire issue to the beautiful numbers 2025 and '25 (including a special throwback to my previous newsletter series ‘Number’ – which you can check out here).
Let’s start with the year itself.
2025 = 45 x 45, and as such is a square number.
It is the only square year most of us will ever see - unless you were around back in 1936 (or intend to live until 2116!)
Also, 45 = 20 + 25, so 2025 = (20 + 25)². How awesomely gorgeous is that!
So if you really want to impress people with your maths skills, although it’s debatable how much longer into January we can continue saying “Have a happy 2025”, why not really nerd it up and instead say:
Or even....
Or, my personal favourite...
Here are √25 (that’s 5) more ripping facts about 25
Wanna play twenty-five ombre?
‘Twenty-five’ is Ireland’s national card game and related to ‘ombre’, the classic Spanish card game. The Canadian game ‘forty-fives’ was spawned by ‘twenty-five’, which itself was called ‘Maw’ as far back as King James I and has also been known as ‘Spoil Five’. The game is described as requiring ‘a fair amount of luck, but some scope for skill’. Sounds like my type of fun!
25 atoms and counting
For something we use every day and take, to an extent, for granted, the technology underpinning your mobile phone is amazing. If you own an iPhone 12 or a more recent model, the chip that powers your phone runs on transistors that are only 5 nanometres wide. That’s about as wide as 25 atoms of silicon and allows 30 billion transistors onto an area about the size of a human fingernail!
25 squared is terrific and automorphic!
25 squared, or 25 x 25, is 625. As this square ends with the number itself, we say that 25 is ‘automorphic’. Like that? Cute hey? (Now if you work out 24 cubed, or 24 x 24 x 24, you’ll see why we call 24 ‘trimorphic’.)
537 delivers the presidential 25
During the 2000 US Presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, a dramatic ballot recount ordered by the Supreme Court saw the state of Florida determined by a miniscule 537 votes. This led Bush to receive the crucial 25 electoral college votes needed to win the closest and most disputed (until recently!) US Presidential election of all time.
Easy Pachisi
When playing India’s national board game ‘Pachisi’, you roll 6 cowrie shells and the number of shells with openings facing up indicates the number of spaces you can move. If you manage a roll with no cowrie shells face up, you move the maximum 25 spaces … hence the name ‘Pachisi’ which means 25 in Hindi.
That’s all from me for now. If you'd like more geeky fun, please check out my other newsletters below, or connect with me on LinkedIn and/or X.
Yours in numbers,
Adam
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