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In 2017, a researcher from the Department of Information Systems, Al al-Bayt University, Jordan published a paper titled: A mathematical Phenomenon in the Quran of Earth-Shattering Proportions: A Quranic Theory Based on Gematria Determining Quran Primary Statistics (words, verses, chapters) and Revealing its Fascinating Connection with the Golden Ratio.

In it, he uses numerology to connect several aspects of the Quran.

In particular, he defines three constants:

  • QC, that is equal to the sum of numerical (gematria) values of all letters in the Quran divided by the sum of all verse numbers in the Quran.
  • qV, which is the sum of the reciprocals of an arbitrary sequence.
  • πA, which is the sum of the reciprocals of the same arbitrary sequence.

He shows that ln(QC)/ln(πA) is similar to the average number of letters per word in the Quran.

He shows makes similar claims for the number of verses per letter and letters per chapter.

Are these claims correct?

user406029
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  • It's quite hard to know what to think about this paper. For instance, one of its central claims is that the ratio of two, fairly arbitrary, numbers derived from the Quran does not match the golden ratio. It's not even a good approximation: there are other integer ratios that are better. Even for the field of numerology, it's a bit rubbish TBH. – Alex Jan 18 '18 at 11:44
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    While editing this question, the claims seemed flimsier and flimsier. He has about as many arbitrary constants as claims. He swaps between letters per [unit] and [units] per letter arbitrarily. He even shows that summing up the number 1, once per alphabet, leads, by an amazing coincidence, to a count of the number of alphabets. There doesn't seem much to debunk; the claims are arbitrary. – Oddthinking Jan 20 '18 at 16:02
  • Your question makes no sense. "sub" is not a word, and the words that is commonly an abbreviation of don't make sense here. At first I thought you meant "sum", but then your next item says sum. Furthermore, the question "Is ln(QC)/ln(pi_A)" cannot be answered without knowing what pi_A is, and even if we knew what it was, this would not be a notable claim (regardless of what QC is, there's some sequence whose sum of reciprocals has this property). – Acccumulation Jan 21 '18 at 02:40
  • @Alex "For instance, one of its central claims is that the ratio of two, fairly arbitrary, numbers derived from the Quran does not match the golden ratio." Do you mean "does match"? – Acccumulation Jan 21 '18 at 02:41
  • @Acccumulation It doesn’t match. If it did then it’d be marginally more interesting. The first half a dozen dps match then it diverges. As inspired maths goes, it’s a bit slapdash. – Alex Jan 21 '18 at 09:14
  • @Accumulation: Yes, it was a trivial typo I made which was evident from the linked source and corrected by the OP. The constants are defined in the linked article. That's not the definition of notable we use (which is linked to the number of people who believe it , not whether it is a substantial idea or not.) – Oddthinking Jan 21 '18 at 15:02
  • Thanks for the replies, I had similar thoughts. I was just wondering if the findings are more significant due to the fact that all three variables he uses together with the QC are some properties of Arabic? Also, do you think the operations on logarithms in the last two examples are mathematically sound? He substitutes multiplication of integers by adding their logarithms using the formula x=y*z => logn x = logn y + logn z but when he comes to the "z", which is a fraction, he does not take the logn of the entire fraction but instead changes it to a fraction of logs. Is this right? – user406029 Jan 27 '18 at 09:20

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