Talk:153 (number)

Plural of fish

the number of fishes - what is the correct plural form of fish here (as a plurality of indvidual animals, not just a net full of fish)? Kosebamse 13:33, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Question

can someone explain how 100, 28 and 25 represent squares, triangles and circles, please? that doesn't make sense to me. Archtemplar 08:20, 19 December 2005 (UTC)Archtemplar

Wikilinks now make this clear. -- Radagast3 (talk) 23:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

RfC

Centralized discussion on this article is taking place at Talk:Miraculous Draught of Fish#RfC: Merge or keep separate? Please comment.

This RfC seems to have expired, although comment could still be helpful. -- Radagast3 (talk) 01:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Pythagoras

Interesting that someone has gone to the trouble of removing all references to Pythagoras from the 'Draught of Fishes' page and the 153 (number page). Also, all references to the number 153 as part of a ratio commonly attributed to Pythagoras, and the pythagorean draught of fishes story, referenced by classical authors, have been removed from the Pythagoras page. So it wasn't enough to remove references to the supposed parallels from the pages. The Pythagorean story, and all references to it have been deleted by enthusiastic Christians. Is this the modern version of book and album burning? Who says Christians aren't contemporary? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.21.238.14 (talk) 14:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There is indeed a Pythagorean fish story -- or rather, multiple different stories (see this book). However, they do not involve the number 153 in any way, so do not really belong in an article on the number 153. The number 153 as part of a ratio called "measure of the fish" by Pythagoras and/or Archimedes would certainly belong, if there was reliable evidence of it being true, which it does not seem to be. It gets no mention in Heath's History of Greek Mathematics, and perusal of the works of Archimedes merely finds a proof that:

${\tfrac {1351}{780}}>{\sqrt {3}}>{\tfrac {265}{153}}\,.$

which doesn't really highlight 153 enough to mention here. -- Radagast3 (talk) 21:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There do seem to be a lot of poorly referenced (and probably false) stories about 153 in the fringe literature. As a general guideline:

A claim like...	is a statement about...	and a reliable reference would be...
Plato was once attacked by 153 frogs	Biography	A reliable biography of Plato (with page number)
Plato wrote that the number 153 represents a frog	Writings of Plato	A specific reference to which book by Plato (with section number), and a link to an online version
Greek mathematicians believed that the number 153 represented a frog	History of Mathematics	A reliable book on Greek mathematics, such as Heath's (with page number)

-- Radagast3 (talk) 10:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I was puzzled myself when I first read the story, but I now see that I didn't read it properly. The claim I read was (I learnt later) quoted from The Jesus Mysteries. Was The Original Jesus A Pagan God by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. However, there is nowhere any mentioning of Pythaogras predicting 153 fish. It is simply assumed: "Pythagoras miraculously predicted the exact number of fish that would be caught, but the story does not record what this number was. [...] It is likely that the number of fish that Pythagoras predicted would be caught was precisely 153. The Pythagoreans were renowned for their knowledge of mathematics and regarded 153 as a sacred number." So no-one needs to lose sleep over this book at least. --Strappado (talk) 15:23, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Truncated triangular number

The note that 153 is a truncated triangular number got my attention. This is true, and though I've never heard of the concept before, I was able to list all the truncated triangular numbers quite quickly, just doing my arithmetic on paper. The math is not very hard. The complete list is: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 36, 66, 105, 153, and 666.

So this leads me to ask a few questions:

• Where did the concept come from? If I wanted to add a citation, where would I start to research this?
• Why is the wording so cagy, in talking about 6 known TTNs? It is easy to list 9, and to prove that the list is complete; surely the primary source knows this.
• Is the concept actually an important fact about 153? The articles about 105 and 666 do not mention this property, and the OEIS doesn't have the sequence.

ACW (talk) 00:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Amateur_Radio_Manual/Table_of_transmission_frequencies
  • In 153 (number) on 2011-05-23 03:34:49, 404 Not Found
  • In 153 (number) on 2011-06-01 16:25:18, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 16:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. -- 202.124.75.57 (talk) 10:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 2

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/schedules/s153_0_.html
  • In 153 (number) on 2011-05-23 03:34:46, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'
  • In 153 (number) on 2011-06-01 16:25:22, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'

--JeffGBot (talk) 16:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Removed. -- 202.124.75.57 (talk) 10:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Driveby comment

The sum total of 153 is 9. Which is identified by a number of mythologies as a sacred number of knowledge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.67.30.98 (talk) 07:56, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

So what? -- 202.124.74.66 (talk) 10:15, 16 March 2013 (UTC)