Older Updates
5/28/2022: For this site's eighth anniversary, I have given it a makeover on the new Google Sites, with many of its articles revised and updated and with more revisions to come! Read this announcement for more information.
4/23/2022: Started working on updating the site's content for the new Google Sites. You won't be able to read this text until May 28, the eighth anniversary of this site.
8/28/2021: Yes, I am well aware the old Google Sites is going away in a few days. I'm currently in the process of figuring out what to do with this site's content, as well as making my own backups. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever return to googology in earnest again beyond preserving the content I already have on this site.
5/28/2021: Happy seventh anniversary to Pointless Large Number Stuff! I'm surprised I remembered it this year.
5/19/2021: Updated a bit of my article on Graham's number, mainly by adding a paragraph near the end of the "Other Ramsey Numbers" section.
4/9/2021: Added/expanded a few entries to my number list related to the periodic table.
2/19/2021: Updated and revamped some early entries in part 1 of my number list. May do more of that.
11/2/2020: Only a few days ago did I realize a somewhat amusing pun, that this site on googology is hosted on Google sites. Just thought I'd point that out.
7/7/2020: Rest in peace, Ronald Graham—the namesake of the legendary Graham's number. I feel bad that I haven't had many updates on this site lately that don't involve deaths. I've always had a very deep respect for mathematicians who are so willing to venture into the world of the unknown, and Graham most certainly qualifies as such.
5/28/2020: Happy sixth anniversary to this website! I only seem to remember this every other year, for some reason. Though I don't see myself regularly posting new content on this website in the near future, I am still more than happy to fix or update old content if someone points it out.
4/12/2020: Rest in peace, John Conway. A legendary figure in recreational mathematics whose impact on the world of googology shall never be forgotten.
12/16/2019: Today I found out that Sbiis Saibian created a site about recreational mathematics, which I believe was made quite recently. So far it only has a section on chess variants. I'm very excited to see where the site goes from here!
12/2/2019: This large number site now has a reference to the legendary video Minecraft with Gadget, somewhere in the Pointless Gigantic List of Numbers. I am so sorry.
10/8/2019: Four days ago I publicly launched my new web domain, cookiefonster.com! I will be hosting blog posts on that domain from here on out, probably mostly about media and maybe occasionally about math or science topics.
8/27/2019: hi please read this (and also everything else on Wait But Why it's so good)
6/4/2019: Jonathan Bowers talked about googology a few days ago in this video (see also this wiki blog post). It looks like he plans to make YouTube videos about his array notation? Keep an eye out! I'm not big on googology news right now, I just found this while casually browsing Googology Wiki on a quiet day. Also I missed this site's fifth anniversary a week ago.
4/21/2019: Happy Easter! Someday I will have to write about the Easter Monkey, the Easter Bunny's little known sibling who manages to reproduce at superfactorial growth rates. It is an unsolved problem just which superfactorial it is though...
4/13/2019: You guys like Homestuck, right? (ten years mind fuck)
4/9/2019: Added an entry to the Pointless Gigantic List of Numbers for 440, where I briefly discuss googology and music.
3/30/2019: My first substantial content on this site in over three years! I wrote up an introduction article for section 3.3.1 last night; it's a brief overview of fast-growing sequences in googology. Don't expect me to go back to regularly writing large number articles again; this is just a one-off addition to this site. It was inspired by an email correspondence I had with someone about googology yesterday.
2/27/2019: While mulling over some projects unrelated to googology, I read up a bit more on New Google Sites. I now understand that it's an alternative to the old one designed for simpler projects and mobile support and that Classic Google Sites isn't going anywhere. I need to stick to Classic to maintain this website and any of a similar caliber due to the complex HTML editing.
2/6/2019: Updated "My Own Links" section of my external links page. If you're interested in seeing writing at length from me, my Blogger is your best bet.
10/30/2018: Just for fun, some minor updates to my large number list pages on 2 and 17.
9/15/2018: A few months ago, Jonathan Bowers, legendary pillar of googology, released an unfinished webpage about the periodic table! Didn't find out about it until today. For some reason I never thought of what it would be like for him to provide his take on a subject I loved so much as a kid; I highly recommend checking it out!
Also, if anyone has any idea what Sbiis Saibian has been up to lately, please let me know! I've always been a big fan of his work and I haven't heard anything from him in a long time.
7/19/2018: Just found out "New Google Sites" is a thing. I looked at it and don't see any reason to update my site to this; it seems to have more features removed than added. Honestly run of the mill for things run by Google. Here's hoping they don't eventually force all sites to convert to this format, or alternately that the new version isn't as bad as it seems.
5/28/2018: Happy fourth birthday to this website! Kind of weird to imagine the legacy this site has gotten, as a silly project I started exactly four years ago.
5/18/2018: For some reason I never said here that I came really close to having the motivation to update this site again during a time of turmoil on Googology Wiki. I guess the time I finally gain the motivation for real is later than I thought it would be.
11/22/2017: Since people still seem to stumble upon this website pretty often, I've updated my biography to more accurately reflect who I am today and elaborated a bit more on my contact information.
8/31/2017: Not actually an update but it occurred to me that if I was still updating this site (one day I'll regain the motivation to at least "finish" some parts of it) I'd be forced to acknowledge on my number list that Gangnam Style stopped being the most viewed video on YouTube, in favor of some random thing I've never even heard of outside that context. (It's still the most viewed video in my heart, which is in the end what really matters, is it not?)
11/21/2016: To be honest I don't know whether or not I'll pick this website up again at some point. If nothing else I'd really like to polish up my number list and give it consistent formatting all the way through; though I can see myself doing that I've long lost motivation to make other substantial additions to this site. For now I made a minor easter egg edit to a page, but it's just a reference to something that's practically obligatory at this point. If you know anything about credit scores you'll know what I'm talking about.
If you're wondering what I've been up to, the links to my stuff at the end of the additional links page are a thing.
5/28/2016: Just dropping by to acknowledge this site's second anniversary.
4/19/2016: I've hardly touched this site in two months. This doesn't actually mean I'm dead; I'm still around in other places on the Internet and I still do sometimes take a moment to think about large numbers. But this extreme inactivity means that this site might as well be on full-out hiatus. When will the pause end you may ask? Whenever I feel like working on the site again. Maybe in a year or two? I'm not sure. Even though I've really lost interest in working on this site, I hope on picking up on it again eventually.
3/4/2016: My site is now officially on what I'll call "soft hiatus". This means I will still post some content, but not at much of a regular pace for the time being. Read this announcement for more information.
2/29/2016: I'm sorry to say this, but I'm kind of losing interest in large numbers. I'm not sure how much I'll keep updating my site, but I will try to keep it somewhat active for the sake of this project.
2/16/2016: Edited my autobiography on the home page.
2/15/2016: Sorry yet again for no updates in a while. I promise you, I've still been trucking along on my whole reformatting plan; currently I'm on my Graham's number article. During this whole reformatting I've even added small amounts of new information to my pages.
2/2/2016: Jonathan Bowers updated his large number pages for the first time in five and a half years! You should check it out, and I added two events relating to those updates to my large number timeline.
2/1/2016: I made some pretty substantial revisions to my article on Andre Joyce's naming systems.
1/26/2016: I've decided that when I finish my reformatting stuff, the next article I'll make will cover the basics of the fast-growing hierarchy and its relatives.
1/20/2016: There's a new largest known prime number, with 5 million more digits than the previous record holder. I updated my number lists to include this new record holder.
1/17/2016: Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I still have been doing work on this site, specifically reformatting section 2. I'm about halfway through reformatting that section. Also, spoof articles now have their own section.
1/2/2016: Finished reformatting section 1.
1/1/2016: Happy new year!!! Here's my announcement for 2016 I promised I'd make.
12/25/2015: Merry Christmas!!! It's the best time to read my Christmas special article if you haven't already! Speaking of Christmas, the Christmas site theme will last until 12/31.
12/22/2015: Updated the site to a temporary red and green Christmas theme. The reformatting is currently in progress: not too far through it but I've definitely made a fair amount of tweaks.
12/20/2015: I am initiating what I'll call the Great Reformatting of 2015. I'll look at every page and make some formatting and punctuation improvements, add more pictures, and reword anything I think I should. Also I already have a general idea for what I'll talk about in my next New Years announcement.
12/18/2015: Never mind yesterday's announcement, I'm bringing a laptop to vacation so I'll work on my site then. I'm specifically planning on working specifically on this site during vacation rather than my other projects. Knowing I'll bring a laptop I probably shouldn't have posted the Christmas page early, ah well.
12/17/2015: I'm going on vacation next week, so no updates then. For an early Christmas gift, here's a special Christmas article for this site.
12/11/2015: Happy late 7th birthday to Sbiis Saibian's large number site! It was actually two days ago but I forgot to post an update then.
12/5/2015: Happy 7th birthday to Googology Wiki!
12/3/2015: I've decided to work on my list of infinite numbers and my regular list of numbers simultaneously. Part 3 is the first part that I feel really could use some kind of revamp, and the later parts even more so. If you check on those pages regularly, you should see some improvements headed your way. I've decided that I'll still have some entries without descriptions, but I'll stray from having those long stretches of numbers without descriptions.
12/2/2015: Just made my first edits to my list of infinite numbers in over 6 months (entries for the LVO and BHO). I can't believe it's been that long since I touched that list.
11/26/2015: Happy Thanksgiving!
11/24/2015: Just finished recoloring my large number timeline and my list of functions. Up next: finally an update to that list of infinite numbers.
11/13/2015: Got done recoloring part 4 of my number list and looking through it, I think that 90% of the second half of part 4 of my list onwards might as well be rewritten entirely, because I plan on changing so much of those parts. That said, I won't go on and recolor the later parts of the list; the next thing I'll do is stylize the large number timeline and the function list the same way I'm doing for the number list, and then I will finally finish that infinite numbers list.
11/9/2015: Cloudy176 of Googology Wiki plans on starting a large number site in two days. He plans on making a number list similar to how mine used to be, in contrast with how I plan on changing it as I said in an announcement two weeks ago.
11/6/2015: Here's a blog post I made about a large number competition I found on the Internet. I couldn't decide where in my site to put it, so I put it on my blog instead.
10/31/2015: Happy Halloween! Also, finished recoloring part 3 of my number list. I've decided that first I'll recolor the entries in my list, then work on my infinite number list, then do the overhaul thing, then improve it with the whole linking-to-entries system.
10/26/2015: Here's an announcement about my planned overhaul to the later parts of my number list.
10/13/2015: Status report: working on recoloring part 3 of my number list. I'll also edit the list in general along the way. I might even do some kind of overhaul to the higher parts of the list.
9/22/2015: Sorry for the lack of updates again. Once again, the new page satisfaction effect has kicked in I think? Next update will be when I finish a text recoloring of all the lists in section L.
9/9/2015: New article released! It's part 1 of my page on poly-cell and Hyper-E notation, where I talk about Sbiis Saibian's childhood googology. Check it out here.
9/3/2015: At long last, the improvements to part 2 of my number list are finally done! The reason it took so long is because I've been doing them pretty much on and off.
9/2/2015: Section L is now called the Pointless Gigantic List Database.
8/28/2015: Part 1 of my next article (will cover Sbiis Saibian's childhood googology) is pretty close to done.
8/24/2015: I've decided to release my article on poly-cell and Hyper-E notation in parts: first the part about poly-cell notation (Sbiis Saibian's childhood large number notation), then Hyper-E notation (its modern equivalent), then the numerous Hyper-E googolisms.
8/18/2015: School starts tomorrow, meaning that I may or may not be as active on this site as I previously was.
8/11/2015: Currently working on an article for section 3.1 on poly-cell notation and Hyper-E notation.
7/30/2015: Even though it's incomplete, I've decided to publicly release my Pointless Gigantic List of Functions as a public incomplete page which you can check out here. Also, I'll be on vacation tomorrow through August 8, so don't expect any updates from me for the next 9 days.
7/21/2015: Sorry I haven't updated in a while. It's mostly that I'm so satisfied with having released my latest page that I sort of forgot about working on this site. Over the next approximately 10 days I'll work on my list of numbers (doing the whole thing of linking to entries like Robert Munafo does), then I'll be gone for about a week.
7/7/2015: Bowers' Linear Array Notation Part 1 is finally here! Check it out here. I've finally released the first part of my coverage of one of googology's "flagship notations", and stay tuned for more articles for section 3.1.
6/21/2015: Changed the title quote for this site. The old one was: "The key to the biggest number contest is not swift penmanship, but rather a potent paradigm for concisely capturing the gargantuan." (Scott Aaronson, source)
6/14/2015: I'll be gone for summer camp from today to Thursday (June 18), so don't expect any updates from me during that time.
6/11/2015: Still working on Bowers' Linear Array Notation Part 1. I've decided to work on it more lately, so stay tuned for its release.
5/28/2015: Happy 1st birthday to this website!!! I don't think I'll release my PGLF (Pointless Gigantic List of Functions) page today, as it's still really far from complete.
5/26/2015: My article on Bowers' linear array notation will be split into two parts when it's released: one for arrays up to 4 entries, and one for higher arrays. The first part is roughly halfway done, though I'm not sure exactly.
5/12/2015: If you speak Chinese and you happen to have found my large number site, then you should check out this website, a Chinese googology website which I discovered today, which is heavily inspired upon large number sites such as Sbiis Saibian's and my own - it's sort of like a Chinese version of Sbiis Saibian's large number site. I don't actually speak Chinese, but I still think it's worth checking out.
5/8/2015: My article on Bowers' linear array notation (for section 3.1) is currently in the works.
5/3/2015: You know the Pointless Gigantic List of Functions page listed as "coming soon" for section L of this site? Well, I've decided that I'll release it on May 28 (first anniversary of this site's creation), whether or not it's all the way done.
5/1/2015: Section 3 of this site is now publicly available, much sooner than I thought it would be! So far only one article is released, and it's an introduction to the work of Jonathan Bowers. Check it out here.
4/28/2015: Section 2 is now officially complete! You can read the review article for section 2 here. Section 3 will probably be launched in a few weeks.
4/26/2015: Article on the weak hyper-operators is finally released! Check it out here. Sorry it took so long - I haven't really been working on my site that much lately. Hopefully more content for my site will follow pretty soon. It's not that I've been busy doing school stuff or whatever, I've just been doing other stuff in my spare time.
4/15/2015: My page on the weak hyper-operators is still in the works - it should be done pretty soon. Also I've been working on some new pages for section 3.
4/5/2015: Happy Easter readers of this site! Keep warm and make sure to stay informed on the bunny apocalypse!
4/2/2015: I hope you got a good laugh out of yesterday's April Fools Day article. Most of the information in there was fake, including the very existence of Conway drift and even the quote attributed to Ronald Graham. The part about Vilius2001 and the IRC chat, however, actually did happen. You can still read that joke article here.
4/1/2015: New article for section 2 on the strange phenomenon of Conway drift! It's a weird and VERY little-known occurrence in Conway chain arrows - here I reveal for the first time that it does indeed exist. Check out the article here. Also, Sbiis Saibian released something even more incredible than that called Ultimate BEAF, which you can check out here.
3/31/2015: There will not be a monthly announcement for April 2015, because it should be pretty obvious what I plan to do this next month for my site - the weak hyper-operators page, review for section 2, and you'll see what I have for when I release section 3.
3/27/2015: I decided to dissolve section M (My Own Googology) now because why the hell not - see this announcement for more on that. I've removed "how I discovered googology" and "numbers I coined", and I moved my extended SI prefixes to be a subpage of part 2 of my number list. As for the alphabetical hierarchy notation, a brand new better version of it with number names will be part of section 3.
3/23/2015: Improvements to my article on Graham's number are now complete. I mostly added information on Ramsey's theorem and the Ramsey numbers, and also elaborated more on the history of the number. Coming up next is an article for section 2 on the weak hyper-operators.
3/22/2015: Changed URLs of all pages in section 1 and section 2 (for example the Graham's number article's URL is now not home/2/2_6 but home/2/grahamsnumber), so that I don't need to change them every time I change the order of articles or add a new one between existing articles. Coming soon is a new article for section 2 about the weak hyper-operators, and section 3 will be released sometime next month.
3/17/2015: Article on Joyce's googol-based naming systems is now complete. Up next are further improvements on my article on Graham's number, with a discussion of Ramsey's theorem and how it connects to Graham's problem
3/11/2015: My article on googological prefixes and suffixes is now split into two pages, not because of size limits (I didn't hit any) but just because I think they do better as two separate pages. The first page (now complete) is about prefixes and suffixes like the fuga- family, and the second (still under construction) is about Andre Joyce's strange googol-based naming system.
3/7/2015: Googo- and googolple- article is now archived here. Its content is currently in the process of being integrated with my prefixes and suffixes page.
3/5/2015: My article on googological prefixes and suffixes (improvements are currently in progress) has been moved to be earlier in section 2.
3/2/2015: Article on extensions to Conway chain arrows released! You can read it here. There's very little work left now for section 2, and section 3 is coming sometime this month.
3/1/2015: New announcement for March 2015, largely about plans for section 3. You can read that announcement here. Also, my old article "Analyzing Aarex's Number List" is now archived here.
2/27/2015: Improved article on Conway chained arrow notation. I now added more information on how Conway himself defines the notation, and how we can devise a working ruleset from his loose definition. The article on extensions to chain arrows is almost done.
2/20/2015: Article on extensions to Conway chain arrows is still in the works. Also, coming soon is a list of large number functions for section L.
2/11/2015: Improved article on Graham's number. Now I go into more detail on Graham's problem, as well as rearranging the order of some of the sections and other small improvements. Up next is an article on extensions to Conway chain arrows.
2/9/2015: Two new articles released: a review article for section 1 (with that section 1 is officially complete) and a new introduction article for section 2 about recursion, an essential tool for making really big numbers.
2/7/2015: Article on Knuth's -yllions released! Check it out here. Up next is a review article for section 1, and after that an update to my article on Graham's number.
2/3/2015: Parts have been renamed to "sections", as I find that "section" sounds better than "part" for this website.
2/1/2015: I've decided to start doing monthly announcements on the first day of every month. You can read this month's announcement by clicking here, where I explain what updates I plan to do in the next month or so.
1/26/2015: Added my upper-bound of all possible chess games to my article on large numbers in probability. My article on Knuth's -yllions is currently in the works, so stay tuned for its release!
1/23/2015: New article on Jonathan Bowers' illions! Check it out here. Also, there is now a separate page for additional links, which now itself has a few new links. Coming up next is an article on Knuth's yllions and how to apply their ideas to the usual illions.
1/20/2015: A few new pages are pending for parts 1 and 2. Coming soon is an article on Bowers' -illions.
1/14/2015: Article on large numbers in probability released! It's a tour of large numbers that can be generated using probability and combinatorics, ranging from the odds of being blind or struck by lightning to crazy Rubik's cubes to the number of possible parallel universes and more!
1/12/2015: Improved article on the googol and googolplex. Now it goes into a lot more detail on how big the googol and googolplex really are.
1/4/2015: Update to part 1 of my number list finally released! I've added some new entries (and improved some others), and expanded the list's introduction.
1/1/2015: Happy new year everyone! Read my announcement for 2015.
12/29/2014: Made some small edits to the homepage. The description on top is shorter and the older updates now get their own page.
12/25/2014: Merry Christmas! I'm on vacation right now, so don't expect updates from me for the next few days.
12/23/2014: The rest of part 6 of my number list is released! Coming soon is a major update to part 1 of the list as well as part 7 and the list of infinite numbers.
12/21/2014: New article on Skewes' numbers released! Here I discuss these two famous large numbers in detail, with their history and their immense magnitude.
12/14/2014: Added quotes and some other improvements to the navigation pages to parts 1 and 2 of this site. Also coming soon is an article on Skewes' numbers in part 1.
12/12/2014: Made some improvements to my article on Knuth up-arrows. It now discusses more on the hyper-operators themselves, including other notations for the operators.
12/11/2014: Improved version of article 1.1 completed. It now has a detailed review of the English numbers and their history, along with the basic operations, largely as a warm-up for later content. Also improved a few other articles.
12/9/2014: Happy 6th birthday to Sbiis Saibian's large number site! You should check it out, it's a web-book about large numbers similar in goal to this site, and it serves as the biggest inspiration for mine. The proximity in birthdays to Googology Wiki is just a nice coincidence. Also, I decided to split part 1 of this site into parts 1 and 2 - some new articles for this split are in the works.
12/5/2014: Happy 6th birthday to Googology Wiki! The 6th birthday of Sbiis Saibian's large number site is in a few days as well.
12/4/2014: Added some more links to the links section below, which you can jump to by clicking here. Check those new links out, they're pretty cool.
11/28/2014: Article on Conway chain arrows released! Coming soon is coverage of Bowers' illions, Knuth's yllions, and a review of part 1. Also, I launched another site about polyominoes and Conway's game of life - check it out here.
11/27/2014: Happy thanksgiving! Also, I just got done some major improvements ot my number list, with generally smaller and better-named ranges of numbers - I felt that some of the ranges, such as the "tertiary" and "expandal" ranges, needed to be split into some smaller ranges because they were too long. Also, the negative and complex numbers now have their own list.
11/24/2014: My page on extensions to the illions now has a section on Rowlett's Greek illions. You can jump to that section here. Also, my article on Conway's chain arrows is nearly finished.
11/21/2014: Improvements to part 1 of my number list are now complete!
11/20/2014: Edited section design of this site - now part 2 will cover functions up to order-type epsilon-zero, and part 3 (coming 2015) will cover stuff beyond that.
11/19/2014: Added title to this site's homepage.
11/18/2014: New article released on Graham's number, a number that is endlessly praised as the largest number used in serious mathematics but it no longer is. In that article I discuss the REAL history of the number, along with the math behind it, and the many misconceptions regarding it.
11/13/2014: My list of infinite numbers is publicly released now, although it's not complete. Stay tuned for updates on it!
11/10/2014: New article on the sizes of the -illions! It's a detailed coverage of how big all those -illions and bigger numbers really are with mind-blowing examples.
11/3/2014: The technical difficulties with my number list are now resolved.
10/31/2014: My number list's user-friendliness improvements are on hiatus right now because part 2 of the list is having technical difficulties.
10/28/2014: My number list is now a 7-part list instead of a 5-part list, with more natural (in my opinion) boundaries between sections. Also, it's currently in the process of being made more user-friendly, e.g. being able to click on a number mentioned to jump to its entry like you can on Robert Munafo's list.
10/26/2014: I've decided to release my article on extensions to the -illions sequentially; that means that each time I finish a section of the article I'll release that section. For now, my coverage of Henkle's and Conway and Guy's -illions is publicly available.
10/23/2014: Introduction to this site added for new readers and to explain a bit more on the purpose of this site.
10/19/2014: Timeline of large numbers released! Check it out here.
10/10/2014: Edited layout of my site - for example, the new article I've been working on about extensions to the -illions will be in part 1 of the site, not part 2. The beta of later parts of my number list is in the works as well.
10/8/2014: Article on Steinhaus-Moser notation publicly released! Here I discuss the notation, as well as three numbers defined with it: the mega, megiston, and Moser. Coming up next is some work on part 2 of this site, as well as a beta stage of late part 4 and part 5 of my list of numbers.
10/6/2014: After working on my site instead of homework I should be doing, the Ackermann function article is now released! Check it out here.
10/5/2014: Up-arrow notation article released. Check it out here.
10/3/2014: Revamped site is now open to public! The site is now divided into parts and aims to be more of a serious coverage of googology instead of just some random articles now. Many new pages will be coming your way, and a few new ones have already been added. And don't worry, all the pages from the old site have been kept.
10/2/2014: Site revamp started
5/28/2014: Site created