Universe

Mathematician Surveys the World to Find Most Popular Favorite Number

February 17, 2016 | Elizabeth Knowles

Numbers

Can you guess what it is?

Mathematician Alex Bellos, British author of two popular books and a blog about math, surveyed over 30,000 people around the globe to find the world’s most favorite number. It may or may not come as a surprise to you, but the answer was seven (as selected by 9.7 percent of respondents). The two closest runners up were three and eight.

While surveying people about their favorite number, Bellos also asked them for their reason, and some of them are pretty entertaining:

When choosing three, a male from the United states explained: “It’s curly, but not pretentious curly like eight.”

SEE ALSO: 6 Odd Facts About Numbers That Sound Too Crazy to Be True

A female from Spain explained that she chose eight, “[b]ecause of its symmetrical and round shape and because it has always given me a sense of friendliness and warmth (unlike, for example, 9 which looks “bossy” or 6 which appears to me a bit submissive).

“When you’re counting up from zero, it feels like uphill all the way until you get to nine and then you can see so far, like a plateau with a view. It’s solid reliable and beautiful,” said an American woman about nine.

Now you may think that this was just a silly survey with no real meaning, but Bellos has made a hypothesis about why seven was chosen so much more often than any other number.

It is the only number between one and 10 that can’t be multiplied or divided by another number in the set to create another number in the set. More specifically, numbers one to five can be multiplied by two to create two, four, six, eight, and ten; and nine can be divided by three to make three. Since seven is prime and on the larger end of 1-digit numbers, it becomes unique in that sense.

In a video on his site, Bellos says: “We’re always sensitive to arithmetical patterns, and this influences our behavior even if we’re not conscious of it, and irrespective of our ability at maths.”

Numbers like pi, e, i, phi, and infinity also came up in the top hundred, which suggests that many people do have an affinity for mathematics and numbers with particular meaning in that field.

Do you have a favorite number? And if so, is the reason for it mathematical?

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