3 ( three) is a number, numeral and numerical digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious and cultural significance in many societies.
The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th century. The bottom stroke was dropped around the 10th century in the western parts of the Caliphate, such as the Maghreb and Al-Andalus, when a distinct variant ("Western Arabic") of the digit symbols developed, including modern Western 3. In contrast, the Eastern Arabs retained and enlarged that stroke, rotating the digit once more to yield the modern ("Eastern") Arabic script digit " ٣".Georges Ifrah, The Universal History of Numbers: From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer transl. David Bellos et al. London: The Harvill Press (1998): 393, Fig. 24.63
In most modern Western , the digit 3, like the other , has the height of a capital letter, and sits on the baseline. In typefaces with text figures, on the other hand, the glyph usually has the height of a lowercase letter "x" and a descender: "". In some French language text-figure typefaces, though, it has an ascender instead of a descender.
A common graphic variant of the digit three has a flat top, similar to the letter Ʒ (ezh). This form, sometimes called a banker's 3, can stop a forger from turning the 3 into an 8. It is found on UPC-A barcodes and standard 52-card decks.
A triangle is made of three sides. It is the smallest non-self-intersecting polygon and the only polygon not to have proper diagonals. When doing quick estimates, 3 is a rough approximation of , 3.1415..., and a very rough approximation of e, 2.71828...
3 is the first Mersenne prime. 3 is also the first of five known . It is the second Fibonacci number (and the second Lucas prime), the second Sophie Germain prime, and the second factorial prime.
3 is the second and only prime triangular number, and Gauss proved that every integer is the sum of at most 3 triangular numbers.
Three is the only prime which is one less than a square number. Any other number which is − 1 for some integer is not prime, since it is ( − 1)( + 1). This is true for 3 as well (with = 2), but in this case the smaller factor is 1. If is greater than 2, both − 1 and + 1 are greater than 1 so their product is not prime.
3 × x | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 27 | 30 | 33 | 36 | 39 | 42 | 45 | 48 | 51 | 54 | 57 | 60 | 63 | 66 | 69 | 72 | 75 | 150 | 300 | 3000 | 30000 |
3 ÷ x | 3 | 1.5 | 1 | 0.75 | 0.6 | 0.5 | 0. | 0.375 | 0. | 0.3 ! | 0. | 0.25 | 0. | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.1875 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.15 |
x ÷ 3 | 0. | 0. | 1 | 1. | 1. | 2 | 2. | 2. | 3 | 3. ! | 3. | 4 | 4. | 4. | 5 | 5. | 5. | 6 | 6. | 6. |
3 | 3 | 9 | 27 | 81 | 243 | 729 | 2187 | 6561 | 19683 | 59049 ! | 177147 | 531441 | 1594323 | 4782969 | 14348907 | 43046721 | 129140163 | 387420489 | 1162261467 | 3486784401 |
x | 1 | 8 | 27 | 64 | 125 | 216 | 343 | 512 | 729 | 1000 ! | 1331 | 1728 | 2197 | 2744 | 3375 | 4096 | 4913 | 5832 | 6859 | 8000 |
According to Pythagoras and the Pythagoreanism school, the number 3, which they called triad, is the only number to equal the sum of all the terms below it, and the only number whose sum with those below equals the product of them and itself.
The phrase "Third time's the charm" refers to the superstition that after two failures in any endeavor, a third attempt is more likely to succeed. However, some superstitions say the opposite, stating that luck, especially bad luck, is often said to "come in threes".See " bad " in the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 2006, via Encyclopedia.com.
One such superstition, called "Three on a Match", says that it is unlucky to be the third person to light a cigarette from the same match or lighter. This superstition is sometimes asserted to have originated among soldiers in the trenches of the First World War when a sniper might see the first light, take aim on the second and fire on the third.
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