<story><title>What&apos;s up with the number 163?</title><url>https://plus.google.com/101584889282878921052/posts/7u73y5FzEZY?pid=5963315119367216690&amp;oid=101584889282878921052</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nilkn</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll be honest -- I don&amp;#x27;t find this sort of thing terribly interesting. I feel when reading this as if I&amp;#x27;m being pressured to ooh and ahh, but to me the magic is just not there.&lt;p&gt;It also strikes me as backwards that people are referring to these incredibly deep algebraic connections as explanations. They&amp;#x27;re not explanations -- they&amp;#x27;re just connections. I don&amp;#x27;t need any of that stuff to prove these identities. I just need a pocket calculator. The algebraic connections might be useful for discovering these identities in the first place, but are not necessary for proving anything here. For any given arithmetic identity I&amp;#x27;m sure you can find some remarkably obtuse algebraic connection which illustrates the same identity. These connections are interesting only insofar as the &lt;i&gt;other stuff&lt;/i&gt; is interesting. The Monster group is interesting, but this identity itself is not particularly amazing to me.&lt;p&gt;Finally, is .999 really &amp;quot;extremely&amp;quot; close to an integer? In engineering, maybe. But in pure mathematics that seems &amp;quot;extremely&amp;quot; far from an integer.</text></comment>
<story><title>What&apos;s up with the number 163?</title><url>https://plus.google.com/101584889282878921052/posts/7u73y5FzEZY?pid=5963315119367216690&amp;oid=101584889282878921052</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mproud</author><text>In Major League Baseball (&lt;a href=&quot;http://mlb.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mlb.com&lt;/a&gt;), the season lasts 162 games, from late March&amp;#x2F;early April to the very end of September. Game 163 is played, only if necessary, as a tiebreaker game (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_tie-breakers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_Major_League_Baseball_...&lt;/a&gt;) that usually determines which team is heading to the postseason and which team is “going home.”&lt;p&gt;Why 162? In 1961, the American League expanded from 8 teams to 10 teams, so instead of playing 154 games against 7 different opponents (22 each), a team now played each other 18 times. (This also works well because 18 is a factor of 3, and baseball often plays its games in a series of 3, held at the same ballpark.) The next year the National League followed suit.&lt;p&gt;If there are any Game 163’s this season they’ll happen Monday.</text></comment>