Big Black Book

Just so u know...

Mathematics: The probability in a game of bridge of all four players getting a single-suit hand is approximately 4.47×10⁻²⁸

Mathematics: The probability in a game of bridge of one player getting a single-suit hand is approximately 2.52×10⁻¹¹ (0.00000000252%)

Mathematics: The probability of rolling snake eyes 10 times in a row on a pair of fair dice is about 2.74×10⁻¹⁶

Mathematics — Lottery: The odds of winning the Grand Prize (matching all 6 numbers) in the US Powerball lottery, with a single ticket, under the rules as of August 2009^[update], are 195,249,053 to 1 against, for a probability of 5.12×10⁻⁹ (0.000000512%).

Mathematics — Lottery: The odds of winning any prize in the US Powerball Multistate Lottery, with a single ticket, under the rules as of 2006, are 36.61 to 1 against, for a probability of 0.027 (2.7%)

Mathematics — Lottery: The odds of winning the Jackpot (matching the 6 main numbers) in the UK National Lottery, with a single ticket, under the rules as of August 2009^[update], are 13,983,815 to 1 against, for a probability of 7.15×10⁻⁸ (0.00000715%).

Mathematics — Lottery: The odds of winning any prize in the UK National Lottery, with a single ticket, under the rules as of 2003, are 54 to 1 against, for a probability of about 0.018 (1.8%)

Mathematics - Poker: The odds of being dealt a royal flush in poker are 649,739 to 1 against, for a probability of 1.5 × 10⁻⁶ (0.00015%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt a straight flush (other than a royal flush) in poker are 72,192 to 1 against, for a probability of 1.4 × 10⁻⁵ (0.0014%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt a four of a kind in poker are 4,164 to 1 against, for a probability of 2.4 × 10⁻⁴ (0.024%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt a full house in poker are 693 to 1 against, for a probability of 1.4 × 10⁻³ (0.14%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt a flush in poker are 507.8 to 1 against, for a probability of 1.9 × 10⁻³ (0.19%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt a straight in poker are 253.8 to 1 against, for a probability of 4 × 10⁻³ (0.39%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt a three of a kind in poker are 46 to 1 against, for a probability of 0.021 (2.1%)

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt two pair in poker are 20 to 1 against, for a probability of 0.048 (4.8%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt only one pair in poker are about 5 to 2 against (2.37 to 1), for a probability of 0.42 (42%).

Mathematics — Poker: The odds of being dealt no pair in poker are nearly 1 to 2, for a probability of about 0.5 (50%)

Mathematics — Poker: the number of unique combinations of hands and shared cards in a 10-player game of Texas Hold'em is approximately 2.117 × 10²⁸

Mathematics — Playing cards: There are 2 598 960 different 5-card poker hands that can be dealt from a standard 52-card deck.

Mathematics — Cards: 52! = 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 (≈8 × 10⁶⁷) - the number of ways to order the cards in a 52-card deck.

Mathematics: the number system understood by most computers, the binary system, uses 2 digits: 0 and 1.

Mathematics: the hexadecimal system, a common number system used in computer programming, uses 16 digits where the last 6 are usually represented by letters: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F.

Mathematics: π ≈ 3.141592653589793, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter

Mathematics — Known digits of π: as of 2002, the number of known digits of π was 1,241,100,000,000 (1.2411 × 10¹²).

Mathematics: 7,625,597,484,987 - a number that often appears when dealing with powers of 3. It can be expressed as 19683³, 27⁹, 3²⁷, and ³3 or when using Knuth's up-arrow notation it can be expressed as and .

Mathematics — NCAA Basketball Tournament: There are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (2⁶³) possible ways to enter the bracket.

Mathematics — Rubik's Cube: There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (about 43 × 10¹⁸) different positions of a 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube.

Mathematics: There are 7,401,196,841,564,901,869,874,093,974,498,574,336,000,000,000 (≈7.401 × 10⁴⁵) possible permutations for the Rubik's Revenge (4x4x4 Rubik's Cube).

Mathematics: There are 282 870 942 277 741 856 536 180 333 107 150 328 293 127 731 985 672 134 721 536 000 000 000 000 000 (2.8287 × 10⁷⁴) possible permutations for the Professor's Cube (5x5x5 Rubik's Cube).

Mathematics: There are 157 152 858 401 024 063 281 013 959 519 483 771 508 510 790 313 968 742 344 694 684 829 502 629 887 168 573 442 107 637 760 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (1.5715 × 10¹¹⁶) distinguishable permutations of the V-Cube 6 (6x6x6 Rubik's Cube).

Mathematics: There are 19 500 551 183 731 307 835 329 126 754 019 748 794 904 992 692 043 434 567 152 132 912 323 232 706 135 469 180 065 278 712 755 853 360 682 328 551 719 137 311 299 993 600 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (1.9501 × 10¹⁶⁰) distinguishable permutations of the V-Cube 7 (7x7x7 Rubik's Cube).

Mathematics — Sudoku: There are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 (≈6.7 × 10²¹) 9×9 sudoku grids.

Mathematics: 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000; 10¹⁰⁰, a googol.

Mathematics: 10^googol (), a googolplex.

Mathematics: 2^43,112,608 × (2^43,112,609 − 1) is a 25,956,377-digit perfect number, the largest known as of 2009.

Mathematics: Graham's number, the last ten digits of which are ...24641 95387. Arises as an upper bound solution to a problem in Ramsey theory and is probably the largest number seriously used in a mathematical proof. Representation in powers of 10 would be impractical (the number of digits in the exponent far exceeds the number of particles in the observable universe).

Computing: There are 128 characters in the ASCII character set.

Computing — Computational limit of a 32-bit CPU: 2 147 483 647 is equal to 2³¹−1, and as such is the largest number which can fit into a signed (two's complement) 32-bit integer on a computer, thus marking the upper computational limit of a 32-bit CPU such as Intel's Pentium-class computer chips.

Computing - IPv4: 4,294,967,296 (2³²) possible unique IP addresses.

Computing — web pages: approximately 8 × 10⁹ web pages indexed by Google as of 2004

Computing — Manufacturing: An estimated 6 × 10¹⁸ transistors were produced worldwide in 2008.

BioMed: the DNA of the simplest viruses has some 5,000 base pairs.

BioMed: Each neuron in the human brain is estimated to connect to 10,000 others

BioMed: Each human being is estimated to have 30,000 to 40,000 genes.

BioMed — Strands of hair on a head: The average human head has about 100,000–150,000 strands of hair.

BioMed — Species: The World Resources Institute claims that approximately 1.4 million species have been named, out of an unknown number of total species (estimates range between 2 and 100 million species)

BioMed — base pairs in the genome: approximately 3 × 10⁹ base pairs in the human genome.

BioMed — bacteria in the human body: there are roughly 10¹⁰ bacteria in the human oral cavity.

BioMed — Neurons in the brain: approximately 10¹¹ neurons in the human brain.

BioMed — Bacteria on the human body: the surface of the human body houses roughly 10¹² bacteria.

BioMed — Cells in the human body: the human body consists of roughly 10¹⁴ cells, of which only 10¹³ are human. The remainder of the cells are bacteria, which mostly reside in the gastrointestinal tract, although the skin is also covered in bacteria.

BioMed-Insects: 200,000,000,000,000 (2 × 10¹⁴) - The estimated number of ants on Earth.

BioMed — Atoms in the human body: the average human body contains roughly 7 × 10²⁷ atoms.

BioMed: 10³⁰, number of bacterial cells on Earth

Language: There are about 6,500 mutually unintelligible languages and dialects.

Language: There are 20,000–40,000 distinct Chinese characters, depending on how one counts them.

Language: 267,000 words in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Language — English words: The New Oxford Dictionary of English contains about 350,000 definitions for English words.

Records: As of July 2004^[update], the largest number of decimal places of π that have been recited from memory - > 42000

Info — Web sites: as of 26 February, 2010, Wikipedia contains approximately 3,206,530 articles in the English language.

Info — Books: The British Library claims that it holds over 150 million items. The Library of Congress claims that it holds approximately 119 million items.

Genocide: Approximately 6,000,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

Demographics: approx. 402,000,000 native speakers of English.

Demographics — world population: 6,587,890,000 - Estimated total mid-year population for the world in 2007 (April 10).

Physical cosmology — Age of the universe: Current theory and observations suggest that approximately 1.4 × 10¹⁰ years have passed since the Big Bang.

Cosmology: 1 × 10⁶³ is Archimedes’ estimate in The Sand Reckoner of the total number of grains of sand that could fit into the entire cosmos, the diameter of which he estimated to be what we call 2 light years.

Astronomy — stars in our galaxy: approximately 4 × 10¹¹ stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Marine biology: 3,500,000,000,000 (3.5 × 10¹²) - estimated population of fish in the ocean.

Economics: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe estimated in February 2009 by some economists at 10 sextillion percent, or a factor of 10²⁰

Geo — Grains of sand: all the world's beaches put together have been estimated to hold roughly 10²¹ grains of sand.

Chemistry: there are roughly 6.022 × 10²³ molecules in one mole of any substance (Avogadro's number)

Chess: 1 × 10⁵⁰ is an estimate of the number of legal chess positions.

Chess: Shannon number, 10¹²⁰, an estimation of the game-tree complexity of chess.

Board games: 4.8231 × 10¹¹⁵, number of ways to arrange the tiles in English Scrabble (100! / 9! / 2! / 2! / 4! / 12! / 2! / 3! / 2! / 9! / 1! / 1! / 4! / 2! / 6! / 8! / 2! / 1! / 6! / 4! / 6! / 4! / 2! / 2! / 1! / 2! / 1! / 2!).