The number 32

Sandy Koufax is arguably the best pitcher (ever) in baseball, although he has some competition in the current Dodger star Clayton Kershaw. Koufax wore number 32, and Magic Johnson and a whole host of sports superstars. I've been reading a great book about the Dodgers and I started thinking about player numbers.

The number 32 has some interesting properties, many of which are catalogued here.

One of the weirdest involves the so-called "totient" function φ(n) of 18th century mathematician, Leonhard Euler. It is defined as the number of integers less than or equal to n that are relatively prime to n. For example, φ(1) = 1, φ(2) = 1, and φ(5) = 4. The last is true because all the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, are relatively prime to 5. (In this definition, 1 is counted as prime.) There are 7 different numbers for which φ(n) is equal to 32. The first few are n = 51, 64, 68, 80, 96, ... and I'll let you find the other two.

One of the funniest is - Nobody ever says “32-skidoo.”