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Which digit occurs most often?

Posted on 1/27/2014
UQ ID:325
Science
Mathematics
Original

Is there any method to calculate, which digit occurs most often in the number the fourth Ackermann-number ? Or would it be necessary to calculate the number digit by digit ? I only know that the last n digits can be calculated, but this does not help much.

Keywords & Tags
elementary-number-theory
decimal-expansion
tetration
hyperoperation
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K2-Think

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MBZUAI-IFM
Qwen2.5-32B
Sep 18, 2025, 01:50 PM

To determine which digit occurs most often in the number (4 \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 4) (the fourth Ackermann number as per the question), we first recognize the enormous size of this number. It involves hexation (4 up-arrows), a hyperoperation that results in a number with an astronomically large number of digits, making direct computation of its decimal expansion infeasible.

Ke...

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GPT-5

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OpenAI
Sep 2, 2025, 06:56 AM

Short answer: there is no known method to determine which digit occurs most often in the decimal expansion of 4↑↑↑↑4 without essentially knowing (i.e., computing) all of its digits.

Some context and what we can say:

  • 4↑↑↑↑4 is a power of 2. In fact, for any number of arrows ≥2, starting with base 4, the result is an integer power of 2. Thus 4↑↑↑↑4 = 2^M for some astronomically large integer M. ...
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o3 Pro

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OpenAI
Aug 1, 2025, 12:00 AM

Write

N = 4 ↑↑↑↑ 4

in ordinary arithmetic.
The first thing to notice is that every stage of the calculation keeps the base 4, so at the very end we again obtain a power of 4:

4 ↑↑ n = 4^(4 ↑↑ (n-1)) , therefore is a power of 4
4 ↑↑↑ n = 4 ↑↑ ( 4 ↑↑↑ (n-1) ) , hence a power of 4

Hence

N = 4 ↑↑↑↑ 4 = 4^K = (2^2)^K = 2^M (M = 2K).

Thus the problem...

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Gemini 2.5 Pro

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Google
Aug 1, 2025, 12:00 AM

This is a fascinating question that touches upon the limits of computation and number theory. Here’s a breakdown of the problem and the reasoning behind the most likely answer.

Summary of the Answer

There is no known method to determine which digit occurs most often in the number . The number is so incomprehensibly large that direct calculation i...

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o3

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OpenAI
Aug 1, 2025, 12:00 AM

Let

      N = 4 ↑↑↑↑ 4        (four Knuth arrows)

(the fourth hyper-operation with the arguments 4 and 4).
The decimal expansion of N contains about N₁ = 4 ↑↑↑↑ 4 ≈ 10^(10^(…)) digits – an amount far beyond anything that can ever be written down.

What is wanted is the exact multiplicities

      c₀ , c₁ , … , c₉          (1)

where c_d is the number of times the decimal digit d occ...

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Claude 3.7 Sonnet

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Anthropic
Aug 1, 2025, 12:00 AM

Analyzing Digit Frequency in the Fourth Ackermann Number

This is a fascinating question about the digit distribution in an extraordinarily large number. Let me break down the number and approach to this problem:

Understanding the Number

The notation refers to tetration and its extensions in Knuth's up-arrow notation:

  • (expone...
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DeepSeek R1

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DeepSeek
deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1
Aug 1, 2025, 12:00 AM
<think> I need to find out which digit appears most frequently in the number \(4 \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 4\), which is the fourth Ackermann number. The notation \(4 \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 4\) means tetration or iterated exponentiation. Specifically, \(\uparrow \uparrow\) is tetration, \(\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow\) is pentation, and \(\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow\) ...
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o4 mini

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OpenAI
Aug 1, 2025, 12:00 AM

There is, in fact, no “clever” number‐theoretic shortcut that will tell you “0 occurs X times, 1 occurs Y times, …, 9 occurs Z times, and the largest of those is digit D.” The reason is simply that to know exactly how often each digit appears you must somehow see every digit of

  N = 4 ↑↑↑↑ 4

and N is so monstrously large that even writing down (let alone storing) its decimal expansion in full ...

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Claude Opus 4

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Anthropic
Aug 1, 2025, 12:00 AM

This is a fascinating question about the digit distribution in the fourth Ackermann number, .

The Challenge

The number is unimaginably large. Using Knuth's up-arrow notation:

  • (a tower of 4 fours)
  • $4 \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 4...
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