Trying to be a Geek, and Failing
My wife watches Dancing with the Stars, and has a bunch of old episodes she was plowing through this weekend on TIVO. Contestant Mark Cuban, Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, seems to want to cultivate a geek image. Each dancer is given a score of 1-10 from each of three judges. Upon getting his score of 7+7+7=21, Cuban made a comment that one would classify as fairly unusual for such a show: "I was kind of hoping for a higher prime number."
I am sure most of the viewers ooohed and aaahhhed. What an intellectual Mark Cuban is! Except there is a problem. 21 is not a prime number. Yes, it's sort of seductively odd, like 51 or 87, but like those numbers it is divisible by 3. Which makes sense since his score was computed as 3x7. OK, so maybe he was talking about the "7" he received from each judge. Well, the number 7 is indeed prime. But there are no other prime numbers less than or equal to 10. It would be impossible to get a higher prime number score than 7 unless the judges went up to a Spinal-Tap-esque 11.
I really wasn't going to publish this little insight until I saw TJIC publish this.
Update: Fixed link. I guess it is a bad sign of my own geek-dom if I can't get an html link right.
Xmas:
7, 7, and 7?
He should have quipped, "They read me, write me and execute me!"
November 12, 2007, 9:34 amla petite chou chou:
7 7 7 sounds like a jackpot to me....
November 12, 2007, 11:22 amMoron Pundit:
If he started to talk about perfect numbers, I'd start to believe he was a geek.
November 12, 2007, 1:51 pmClark Cooper:
I didn't see this, but is it possible that there is a comma between higher and prime? That is, he was hoping to get a 23 (at least), which would be a higher, prime number.
November 13, 2007, 9:13 am