Talk:42 (number)

WTF is the ipod nano advertisement doing in this section. The damn thing didn't exist when the show was written and it is only the answer to Seteve Jobs' pension fund problems.

If the nanos indeed weigh 42 grams, it's simply a coincidence, as are most of the references to 42 on this page - many of them have absolutely NOTHING to do with Hitchhiker's if that's what you're thinking. The blatant references to Hitchhiker's are noted here, and on the page The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy cultural references. --JohnDBuell 11:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I removed the line

• 42 in binary translates to 101010

only because it is made redundant by the Docuan table. However, if someone can elaborate why the binary translation is of interest, they should restore that line and follow it with the elaboration. PrimeFan 22:40, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Have removed reference to Elvis' death from the pop culture section. It was hardly intentional that he lived to only forty-two. And it's already mentioned further down in the article. TRiG 22:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

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I just added a reference to a web page, Deep Thought, that includes a vast number of sightings of 42. I'd like to copy over the entries to Wikipedia, so I and others could start work on getting references for all of them(many are from TV shows, books, etc.), but I'm not sure if that is OK, what sort of paraphrasing would be necessary, etc... I'll email the webmaster of the page, anyway, and see what reply I get back. JesseW 06:21, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you do start to copy some of these sightings, I think that it would be wise to leave out all the sightings from TV, movies ect. where it is just coincidentally mentioned. Eg. If af person has a phonenumber wich contains "42" then I would say that is beyond the scope of an encyclopedia. If people were interested in that they can always just visit the site. Eruantalon 6 Oct 2004

Do we really need a list of every 42 sighting? Why bother - most of them will be totally insignificant. Gamaliel 19:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My point exactly, though I do find some of them amusing, especially those that relate directly back to something in Douglas Adams's Books. Eg. the one about mice, though it might be to much work to try to explain in this article. Perhaps we should mention that Douglas Adams claims that he picked the number at random. Eruantalon 6 Oct 2004

Newsflash: Not every reference of the number 42 must relate to HGTTG. I'm removing a couple of sentences to this effect. --195.92.67.68 21:24, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Number of eyes in a deck of cards

I don't have a deck of cards handy right now, so I don't want to edit this new tidbit just yet:

• The number of eyes in a deck of 52 cards.

But this needs to be verified and clarified (that we're talking about which standard deck of cards, for one thing).

If every Jack, Queen and King has four eyes (two on the top head and two on the head mirrored below), that means that the royal cards of a given suit have twelve eyes total. Multiply that by four suits and you get 48. So if 42 is correct, that means that some of the royal cards, the royal personage is painted in profile so only one eye shows on the top head (and one more eye on the head mirrored below). PrimeFan 21:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Hint - think "one-eyed jacks" Bunthorne 19:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

In the most common playing card illustrations in use today, there are two one-eyed jacks, and one one-eyed king. Not sure which suits they are, though. Dansiman 17:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

God/Devil?

Is the number 6 associated with the Devil and 7 with God? I think that sentence can go.--Lkjhgfdsa 20:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Possible new information for '42'

I am not the most experienced person at making wiki edits, so i bring it up here, and invite someone else to try it. But i do believe the article referenced [here] might contain some new insights into the value of 42.

Reference to Riemann zeta function has been added, since the article looks serious. Some matematician should review that.

4orty 2wo

4orty 2wo is actually a ARG gaming company that has nade the ARG's of the like of 'ilovebees' and 'lastcallpoker'

Unnecessary

Somebody should probably remove the entry of the Capital High students, as it seems as though they added it themselves.

Done. --JohnDBuell 02:46, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Nintendo DS

Why does the bit about the Nintendo DS Lite being 42 percent smaller keep getting deleted?

According to the edit summaries, it is removed per Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers#Numbers in statistics. --JohnDBuell 12:00, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Third moment of the Riemann zeta function?

This article says:

It is believed to be the third moment of the Riemann zeta function, based partially upon evidence from quantum mechanics.

I don't know what this means. Here's a guess:

$\int _{(-\infty ,\infty )}s^{3}\zeta (s)\,ds=42.$

I'm accustomed to the definition of momnets of probability measures; if ζ were a probability density function then the integral above would be the third moment of the corresponding probability distribution. But ζ is negative in some places, and from the way ζ(s) blows up at s = 1 it seems we'd have to be thinking of a Cauchy principal value or something like that.

Can someone make the article's statement clearer? Michael Hardy 17:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I've exchanged some email with John Baez, the mathematical physicist who has edited Wikipedia articles as user:John Baez, and he reports that he cannot access Wikipedia because he is in China. He wrote:

“ So, feel free to post this comment for me:

I don't know anything about the "3rd moment of the Riemann zeta function", but perhaps what's meant is the 3rd moment of the distribution of spacings between zeroes of the Riemann zeta function. There's a lot of evidence relating the distribution of these spacings to the distribution of spaces between eigenvalues of a large random self-adjoint matrix. For lots more, try this:

http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/bump-gue.htm

and for general connections between the Riemann zeta function and quantum mechanics, try:

http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/physics1.htm

Best, jb

”

My wild guess seemed so implausible that I'm both relieved to hear that it's wrong and pleased to hear that this otherwise implausible-seeming statement can be construed in such a way that it makes sense. Michael Hardy 16:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)