Pythagorean comma
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In music, when one ascends by a cycle of justly tuned perfect fifths (ratio 3:2), leapfrogging 12 times, one eventually reaches a note around seven octaves above the note one started on, which, when lowered to the same octave as the starting point, is (a very small amount over) 23.46 cents higher than the initial note. This interval, 531441:524288 or exactly 1.0136432647705078125:1, is called a Pythagorean comma, named after the ancient mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras. It is sometimes called a ditonic comma.
This interval has serious implications for the various tuning schemes of the chromatic scale, because in Western music, 12 perfect fifths and seven octaves are treated as the same interval. Equal temperament, today the most common tuning system used in the West, gets around this problem by flattening each fifth by a twelfth of a Pythagorean comma (2 cents), thus giving perfect octaves.
Another interval of similar size is the syntonic comma.
See also Pythagorean tuning and schisma.