Palindrome

While reviewing my blog's viewership, the Total Pageviews was found to be 16661. I casually read it backwards and found the count reads exactly the same both ways. It was amazing that even after reversing the digits the value did not change. It remained 16661. I am sure all of us might have come across such figures and words that remains the same, no matter whether we read it forward or backwards.

English language which boasts of having the largest vocabulary has a specific word to denote such amazingly symmetric word formations and numbers; the word is palindrome. Incidentally I learnt the first palindrome from my classmates during school days. The word is “malayalam" which reads exactly the same when spelt backwards. Other examples are Anna, Radar, Rotor etc.

Wikipedia defines palindrome as a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of symbols or elements, whose meaning may be interpreted the same way in either forward or reverse direction. The word was coined in the 17th century from the Greek roots palin (πάλιν; "again") and dromos (δρóμος; "way, direction"). The Greek phrase to describe the phenomenon is karkinikê epigrafê (καρκινικὴ επιγραφή; "crab inscription", or simply karkinoi (καρκίνοι; "crabs"), alluding to the movement of crabs, such as an inscription that may be read backwards.

The oldest record of Palindrome dates back to 79 AD graffito named Sator Square written in Latin : "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas". This particular palindrome is remarkable for the fact that the first letters of each word form the first word, the second letters form the second word, the third letters form the third word, and so on. Further, those words could be arranged into a word square that reads the same in four different ways : horizontally or vertically from either top left to bottom right or bottom right to top left.

As mentioned in the definition, palindromic formation is not restricted to words alone. There are numerals and phrases which qualify to be called a palindrome. For example “A nut for a jar of tuna” if we read the phrase backwards, (ignoring punctuations) it would be the same as in forward. There are numerous such palindromic words and phrases in the web that could keep us occupied the whole day.

Coming to my blog’s viewership count (16661), it reads exactly the same despite the digits being reversed. Therefore 16661 qualify to be called a  numeral palindrome or palindromic number.

As a matter of fact all single digit numbers in base 10 are palindromic. For a two digit number there are 9 palindromic numbers (11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99). In case of three digits, we have 90 palindromic numbers (101, 111, 121, 131, 141, 151, 161, 171, 181, 191, …, 909, 919, 929, 939, 949, 959, 969, 979, 989, 999). Likewise in any base there are infinitely many palindromic numbers such as 101, 1001, 10001, etc in which the nth number is 1 followed by n zeros, and 1.

The next palindromic number to watch for my blog would be 16761 followed by 16861, 16961, 17071 .... etc. Who so ever manages to clock the next palindromic count and notifies me, he/she would earn a special mention. So what are you waiting for, check out, may be you are the one I am looking for.