The 'G' stands for numbers in Graham's sequence that is explained on the page that Faldage gave us the link to.
G(1) = 1
G(2) = 2^2
G(3) = 3^3^3
G(4) = 4^4^4^4
G(5) = 5^5^5^5^5
Pretty big numbers. I like this stuff, but I'm having trouble figuring out what's bigger than what. Normally when I'm faced with big numbers at work, I see how the log works or the log log ... but this stuff is very huge.
My first job out of college, another program had to compute average network capacity as a percentage of total capacity. The final results should be between 0 and 1, but the intermediate results were overflowing the processor - and other alternatives were too time consuming: so I showed him how to use logarithms to make the huge numbers smaller. Worked like a champ. But while those numbers were vastly bigger than any most people are likely to use, they are much closer to zero than to the numbers that you and Faldage are referring to.
