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| | Math Forum - Ask Dr. Math (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04) |
 | | By comparison, three would not be an 'honest' number because the name 'three' contains five letters (too many), and five would not be an 'honest' number because the name 'five' contains four letters (too few). |
 | | However, if this is supposed to be an attribute of the _number_, it's not clear why it should depend only on spellings in English, and not on spellings in other languages. |
 | | For example, in Spanish, we have 4 <--> 'cuatro' (not honest) 5 <--> 'cinco' (honest) and in Italian, we have 3 <--> 'tre' (honest) 4 <--> 'quattro' (not honest) So this isn't really a mathematical concept at all, but a linquistic one, which applies not to the _number_ four, but to the _word_ 'four'. |
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