MemeMachineGo!

In Kaprekar’s operation, one takes a natural number whose individual digits are not all the same, generates two new numbers by sorting the digits in ascending and descending order, subtracts the smaller of these new numbers from the larger, and repeats with that result. For any 4-digit number, this will result in 6174 within 7 steps, and remain there . (Look to the linked article for a longer description, with examples and elaboration.)

But does it mean anything? Or is it just the incidental result of number-twiddling? And can we really quantitatively distinguish the two?

Now that’s a big question.