(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The answer may surprise you and oddly comes from the matrix reloaded.
Yes, I did just say a film some Mathematicians got very bored and watched the Matrix reloaded decided to look into how many ways could be found.
The Merovingian had a very strange knot used on his tie. Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, decided to take a look at papers to find if anybody has done a study.

This is not the first time back in 1999, some Mathematicians had a go and found 85. Oddly Mikael found that the Merovingian knot was missing from the examples created.
So by changing the rules also a very important limit to how much winding moves you can make.
He was able to come up with a new number with the help of his colleagues.

For people who are curious a bunch of people in the films each have different knots all missing. So thank you Sweden higher education system for solving an important problem.
And for anybody who not seen the film, here it is recreated.



And the final number found.....
177,147

Yep
So next time you need to make a knot a couple choices for you to go for.

I found it interesting the full story can be found from the brilliant new scientist magazine
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I can't even think of how much the number 177,000 is when tying a not. That's just insane.