The following example is an expansion of one first presented on
USENET by Charles Culver of Computers for Christ.
For this example, we will use numerical values for English letters
assigned using the same pattern as used for Arabic, Greek
and Hebrew.
A=1 B=2 C=3 D=4 E=5 F=6 G=7 H=8 I=9
J=10 K=20 L=30 M=40 N=50 O=60 P=70 Q=80 R=90
S=100 T=200 U=300 V=400 W=500 X=600 Y=700 Z=800
We will analyse the famous first line of Poe's classic poem
"The Raven":
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
- There are 7x7 letters.
- The first and last words sum to 202x7,
of which the first letters contribute 80x7.
- The consonants in words starting with a consonant sum to 537x7.
- The consonants in words ending with a consonant sum to 485x7,
of which 192x7 comes from the odd length words and 293x7 from the
even length words.
- The consonants in words 2,4,6,8,10 sum to 177x7.
- There are 7 words ending with consonants.
- There are 3x7 consonants in words of even length.
- Considering words 1,3,5,7,9,11:
- There are 3x7 letters.
- The even (2,4,6..) letters in each word total 138x7.
- The last letters of each word total 205x7.
- The first and last letters of each word total 51x7x7.
- Considering the verb "pondered":
- The first letter has value 10x7.
- The vowels have total value 10x7.
In his original article, Charles wrote:
There are a number of other objections to Panin's methodology
as well, which time does not permit me to go into.
It appears that Charles is just as good at writing numerical text
as Poe was.
- The sentence has 3x7 words and a total value of 143x7x7.
- The first word has value 44x7.
- Words ending in vowels have value 230x7.
- Words ending in consonants have value 708x7.
- The three pronouns total 40x7.
- The words which start with a vowel and end with a consonant
total 3x7x7x7.
- Considering just words 2,4,6,8,...,20:
- There are 6x7 letters.
- The 3x7 letters in odd position in the sentence total 53x7x7.
- The 3x7 letters in odd position in a word total 54x7x7.
- The first letters total 163x7.
- The consonants total 408x7.
Back to the Panin page
Back to the Mathematical Miracles page
Creator: Brendan McKay,
bdm@cs.anu.edu.au.