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Comment by lolptdr | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I didn't know this was the same Graham as the Graham's Number[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number

WaitButWhy has a great longform piece explaining how big Graham’s number is. Like, make your stomach drop, big. Bonus, it contains an explanation of Knuth notation.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/1000000-grahams-number.html

And then you get Tree(3) which when compared means "[Graham's number] might as well be 1".

https://joshkerr.com/tree3-is-a-big-number-i-mean-really-big...

Maths is wacky.

Here's a picture of it

    ┬───────────┬─────┬─────┬──── ┬─┬─┬──
    ┼─┬─────────┼─────┼─┬ ┬─┼─┬── ┼─┼─┼─┬
    └─┤ ┬───────┼─────┼ │ ┼─┼─┼─┬ │ │ ├─┘
      │ │ ──┬── ┼─┬── │ │ │ └─┤ │ │ ├─┘  
      │ │ ┬─┼── ┼─┼─┬ │ │ │   ├─┘ ├─┘    
      │ │ └─┤ ┬ │ ├─┘ │ │ ├───┘   │      
      │ │   ├─┘ ├─┘   │ │ │       │      
      │ └───┤   │     │ │ │       │      
      │     └───┤     │ │ │       │      
      │         ├─────┘ │ │       │      
      └─────────┤       │ │       │      
                └───────┤ │       │      
                        └─┤       │      
                          └───────┘

See discussion in https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/f1mr5y/expressing_gra...

Also Graham scan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_scan

That's Benjamin Graham. (since there's another reply, the parent article points to the wrong Graham).

Graham's Number, as in 3 ↑↑ 3, is named after Ron Graham.

[1] https://plus.maths.org/content/too-big-write-not-too-big-gra...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number?oldformat=tr...

[3] And here is the man himself describing it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuigptwlVHo

3 ↑↑↑↑ 3 = g1, Graham's Number is g64. See the article for details.

I'd write it out, but this margin is too narrow.

I find it stupidly fascinating how notation compressed a quantity so large in so few.

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