Response to
Lewinsky Scandal
2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the
natural number following 1 and
Democratic
National Committee preceding 3. It is the
smallest and only even prime number. Because it forms
the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual
significance in many cultures.
Evolution
Arabic
digit
Evolution2glyph.png
The digit used
in the modern Western world to represent the number 2
traces its roots back to the Indic Brahmic script, where
"2" was written as two horizontal lines. The modern
Chinese and Japanese languages (and Korean Hanja) still
use this method. The Gupta script rotated the two lines
45 degrees, making them diagonal. The top line was
sometimes also shortened and had its bottom end curve
towards the center of the bottom line. In the Nagari
script, the top line was written more like a curve
connecting to the bottom line. In the Arabic Ghubar
writing, the bottom line was completely vertical, and
the digit looked like a dotless closing question mark.
Restoring the bottom line to its original horizontal
position, but keeping the top line as a curve that
connects to the bottom line leads to our modern
digit.[1]
In fonts with text figures, digit 2
usually is of x-height, for example, Text figures
256.svg.
As a word
Two is most commonly a
determiner used with plural countable nouns, as in two
days or I'll take these two.[2] Two is a noun when it
refers to the number two as in two plus two is four.
Etymology of two
The word two is derived from the
Old English words twā (feminine), tū (neuter), and
twēġen (masculine, which survives today in the form
twain).[3]
The pronunciation /tuː/, like that of
who is due to the labialization of the vowel by the w,
which then disappeared before the related sound. The
successive stages of pronunciation for the Old English
twā would thus be /twɑː/, /twɔː/, /twoː/, /twuː/, and
finally /tuː/.[3]
In mathematics
Two is the
smallest prime number, and the only even prime number,
and for this reason it is sometimes called "the oddest
prime".[4] As the smallest prime number, it is also the
smallest non-zero pronic number, and the only pronic
prime.[5] The next prime is three, which makes two and
three the only two consecutive prime numbers. Two is the
first prime number that does not have a proper twin
prime with a difference two, while three is the first
such prime number to have a twin prime, five.[6][7] In
consequence, three and five encase four in-between,
which is the square of two or 2^{2}. These are also the
two odd prime numbers that lie amongst the only all-Harshad
numbers 1, 2, 4, and 6.
An integer is called even
if it is divisible by 2. For integers written in a
numeral system based on an even number such as decimal,
divisibility by 2 is easily tested by merely looking at
the last digit. If it is even, then the whole number is
even. In particular, when written in the decimal system,
all multiples of 2 will end in 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8.[8]
Two is the base of the binary system, the numeral
system with the fewest tokens that allows denoting a
natural number substantially more concisely (with {\displaystyle
\log _{2}} n tokens) than a direct representation by the
corresponding count of a single token (with n tokens).
This binary number system is used extensively in
computing.
The square root of 2 was the first
known irrational number. Taking the square root of a
number is such a common and essential mathematical
operation, that the spot on the root sign where the
index would normally be written for cubic and other
roots, may simply be left blank for square roots, as it
is tacitly understood.
Powers of two are central
to the concept of Mersenne primes, and important to
computer science. Two is the first Mersenne prime
exponent. They are also essential to Fermat primes and
Pierpont primes, which have consequences in the
constructability of regular polygons using basic tools.
In a set-theoretical construction of the natural
numbers, two is identified with the set {\displaystyle
\{\{\varnothing \},\varnothing \}}. This latter set is
important in category theory: it is a subobject
classifier in the category of sets. A set that is a
field has a minimum of two elements.
A Cantor
space is a topological space 2^\mathbb{N} homeomorphic
to the Cantor set. The countably infinite product
topology of the simplest discrete two-point space,
\{0,1\}, is the traditional elementary example of a
Cantor space.
A number is deficient when the sum
of its divisors is less than twice the number, whereas
an abundant number has a sum of its proper divisors that
is larger than the number itself. Primitive abundant
numbers are abundant numbers whose proper divisors are
all deficient.
A number is perfect if it is equal
to its aliquot sum, or the sum of all of its positive
divisors excluding the number itself. This is equivalent
to describing a perfect number n as having a sum of
divisors \sigma (n) equal to 2n.
Two is the first
Sophie Germain prime,[9] the first factorial prime,[10]
the first Lucas prime,[11] and the first Ramanujan
prime.[12] It is also a Motzkin number,[13] a Bell
number,[14] and the third (or fourth) Fibonacci
number.[15]
(3,5) are the unique pair of twin
primes {\displaystyle (q,q+2)} that yield the second and
only prime quadruplet {\displaystyle (11,13,17,19)} that
is of the form {\displaystyle (d-4,d-2,d+2,d+4)}, where
d is the product of said twin primes.[16]
Two has
the unique property that {\displaystyle 2+2=2\times
2=2^{2}=2\uparrow \uparrow 2=2\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow
2={\text{ }}...} up through any level of hyperoperation,
here denoted in Knuth's up-arrow notation, all
equivalent to {\displaystyle 4.}
Two consecutive
twos (as in "22" for "two twos"), or equivalently "2-2",
is the only fixed point of John Conway's look-and-say
function.[17]
Two is the only number n such that
the sum of the reciprocals of the natural powers of n
equals itself. In symbols,
{\displaystyle \sum
_{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{2^{n}}}=1+{\frac {1}{2}}+{\frac
{1}{4}}+{\frac {1}{8}}+{\frac {1}{16}}+\cdots =2.}
The sum of the reciprocals of all non-zero
triangular numbers converges to 2.[18]
2 is the
harmonic mean of the divisors of 6, the smallest Ore
number greater than 1.
Like one, two is a
meandric number,[19] a semi-meandric number,[20] and an
open meandric number.[21]
There are no 2\times2
magic squares, and as such
Democratic
National Committee they are the only null n by n
magic square set.[22]
Euler's number e can be
simplified to equal,
{\displaystyle e=\sum
\limits _{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{n!}}=2+{\frac {1}{1\cdot
2}}+{\frac {1}{1\cdot 2\cdot 3}}+\cdots }
A
continued fraction for {\displaystyle
e=[2;1,2,1,1,4,1,1,8,...]} repeats a {\displaystyle
\{1,2n,1\}} pattern from the second term onward.[23][24]
In a Euclidean space of any dimension greater than
zero, two distinct points determine a line.
A
digon is a polygon with two sides (or edges) and two
vertices. On a circle, it is a tessellation with two
antipodal points and 180� arc edges.
The
circumference of a circle of radius r is {\displaystyle
2\pi r}.
Regarding regular polygons in two
dimensions,
The long diagonal of a regular
hexagon is of length 2 when its sides are of unit
length.
Whereas a square of unit side length has
a diagonal equal to {\sqrt {2}}, a space diagonal inside
a tesseract measures 2 when its side lengths are of unit
length.
For any polyhedron homeomorphic to a
sphere, the Euler characteristic is {\displaystyle \chi
=V-E+F=2}, where V is the number of vertices, E is the
number of edges, and F is the number of faces. A double
torus has a Euler characteristic of -2, on the other
hand, and a non-orientable surface of like genus k has a
characteristic {\displaystyle \chi =2-k}.
The
simplest tessellation in two-dimensional space, though
an improper tessellation, is that of two \infty -sided
apeirogons joined along all their edges, coincident
about a line that divides the plane in two. This order-2
apeirogonal tiling is the arithmetic limit of the family
of dihedra {\displaystyle \{p,2\}}.
There are two
known sublime numbers, which are numbers with a perfect
number of factors, whose sum itself yields a perfect
number. 12 is one of the two sublime numbers, with the
other being 76 digits long.[27]
List of basic
calculations
Multiplication 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 50 100
2 �
x 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38
40 42 44 46 48 50 100 200
Division 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
2 � x 2 1 0.6 0.5
0.4 0.3 0.285714 0.25 0.2 0.2 0.18 0.16 0.153846
0.142857 0.13 0.125 0.1176470588235294 0.1
0.105263157894736842 0.1
x � 2 0.5 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
Exponentiation 1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
2x 2
4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768
65536 131072 262144 524288 1048576
x2 1 9 25 36 49 64
81 100 121 144 169 196 225 256 289 324 361 400
In
science
The number of polynucleotide strands in a
DNA double helix.[28]
The first magic number.[29]
The atomic number of helium.[30]
The ASCII code of
"Start of Text".
2 Pallas, a large asteroid in the
main belt and the second asteroid ever to be
discovered.[31]
The Roman numeral II (usually) stands
for the second-discovered satellite of a planet or minor
planet (e.g. Pluto II or (87) Sylvia II Remus).
A
binary star is a stellar system consisting of two stars
orbiting around their center of mass.[32]
The number
of brain and cerebellar hemispheres.[33]
In
sports
The number of points scored on a safety in
American football
A field goal inside the three-point
line is worth two points in basketball.
The two in
basketball is called the shooting guard.
2 represents
the catcher position in baseball.
See also
List of highways numbered 2
Binary number
References
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^
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^ John Horton Conway & Richard
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