14 August 2011


The number 8,675,309 is the title of a song. It is also a prime number, and as far as I can tell, it's the largest prime number to appear in a song title. According to this list of songs with numbers in the title from Wikipedia (which is currently in the "Wikilists" space because it was deleted from mainstream Wikipedia, larger numbers in song titles are: 9 million, 30 million, 93 million, 100 million, 1 billion, 1 trillion, 1 quadrillion, 1 googolplex, infinity minus one, and infinity.

I'm not surprised to see that most of these are "round numbers", simply because they're easier to say; in particular by inspection they are not prime, since they're all multiples of large powers of 10. But I'm wondering if anybody out there has written a song titled, say, "six billion and one".

(No fair going out and writing such a song.)


Noah said...

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes" isn't the title I suppose.

Michael Lugo said...

No, it's called "Seasons of Love". And if you think about how it's calculated, 525,600 is very obviously not prime.

Noah said...

Of course.

Keith Ramsay said...

Not only is 8675309 prime, but it's a twin prime (since 8675311 is also prime).