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I wonder what's special about the number 125?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)

Wasn't 1729 also the name of the team Waterhouse was part of in Cryptonomicon?

That was Detachment 2702 (which was originally Detachment 2701, but Lawrence worried that Rudy would notice the name since it's the product of two primes)

Not just that, but two palindromic primes!

125 is a power of 5 whose digits rearrange to a power of 2, namely 512, and I imagine its the only power that works like this. And if you complain about arbitrarily using base 10, that's just 2 times 5

> whose digits rearrange to

I think rearranging digits until the result has interesting properties is a dubious claim to fame. It evokes the pseudomathematics of numerology and is only one step away from nonsense like "The Bible Code".

Especially since "5 cubed" is respectable enough on its own.

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