Birthday Math

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Today is Shawna’s birthday, and I was reminded, as I am every time someone celebrates a birthday, of a problem my high school physics teacher posed to us when asked about his age:

Last year my age was a perfect square. Next year my age will be a perfect cube.

In fact, his age was the only solution to that problem.

I wondered if I could come up with such a description of my own age (Shawna’s too, but I’m not going to share that one). I wanted the description to be unique in some sense, and the best I could come up with was a minimal solution:

My age is prime, the sum of two consecutive composite integers, won’t be prime again for six years (sexy primes!), and is the smallest such age.

Does anyone else have a cool way of describing their age?  (Note the implication about my own description.)

3 Responses to “Birthday Math”

  1. Ξ Says:

    Happy Birthday Batwoman!

    Every time I think of cool way to describe my own age I realize it’s not unique…I’ll have to keep working on it.

  2. Ted Says:

    When I was your age, I described it as the last time my age would fit in x bits binary. I’m 3/4 the way from that age to filling x+1 bits.

  3. The One-Year Anniversary Carnival of Mathematics « 360 Says:

    […] the classification of all finite simple groups, and 26 letters in the English alphabet. 26 is the only number directly between a square and a cube (proved by Fermat), and it is the smallest number which is not […]

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