JAD ABUMRAD: Three, two, one. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And this ...

ALEX BELLOS: This. Like this?

ROBERT: This is Alex Bellos.

ALEX BELLOS: Okay.

ROBERT: He's a writer. He's written a lot about sports—particularly about Brazilian soccer, but also math or he likes to say, "maths."

ALEX BELLOS: And when I wrote my first math book, Here's Looking at Euclid, I went and gave loads of talks. And at the end of the talks, there always would be someone who would put their hand up and they'd say "What's your favorite number?" And this used to just irritate me because I myself don't have a favorite number.

ROBERT: You don't have a favorite number?

ALEX BELLOS: No, I think it's stupid. Well no, that's actually incorrect. I—I did think it was stupid, I just didn't have one.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: Wait, and why would the question annoy him? Well, it seems to me it's the most normal question you could ask.

ROBERT: Well, but this is—remember, this is a—this is—he's talking about a math book to math enthusiasts. "What's your favorite number?" It's like sort of a—it's like it's too silly. Or maybe it's like they're making fun of him.

ALEX BELLOS: I got so infuriated that once—I think I was a bit tired, it was like, I don't know where the gig was, and I just said, "What's your favorite number?" Just turning it back at the person in the audience, and they said "Um, oh, 12."

ALEX BELLOS: And I was shocked, and I said, "What? You—you weren't asking me because you were kind of taking the piss out of the math there, you were—actually really wanted to know because you wanted to share your own favorite number." And he's like, "Oh, yeah." And then the person sitting next to them were like, "Oh, yeah. Like, mine's eight." And then, "Mine's seven." And I thought this is interesting! And I can remember asking the audience as well, "Who here has got a favorite number?" And at least half the people put their hands up. And in a way that you go from being a smoker and when you stop smoking to being like a rabid anti-smoker, I went from being, you know, favorite number agnostic to being obsessed with favorite numbers.

ROBERT: He started a website.

ALEX BELLOS: Favouritenumber.net. 

ROBERT: You know, just asking people the question.

ALEX BELLOS: And I put it out there.

ROBERT: And I helped him out on my blog.

ALEX BELLOS: And I had, within the first few weeks, actually, more than 30,000 people.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Hello?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Hello.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Hi.]

ALEX BELLOS: From all over the world.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: This is Jenny from Round Lake, New York.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: My name is Zatar from Dubai.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Darren Sker, Sydney, Australia.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Montevideo, Uruguay.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Oslo, Norway.]

ALEX BELLOS: Telling their favorite numbers.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: My favorite number is definitely eight.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: 30.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: 29.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: 11.]

ALEX BELLOS: And the reasons why.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: The reason it's four is because my favorite card is the ace of spades, and it's commonly called the Death Card.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: My birth date is 4, 14, 59. So 5 from 9 is 4.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, child: My favorite number is 100 because it has two zeros.]

ROBERT: Okay, so here's what's fascinating about this—at least to me. First of all, the volume of responses. He got about 30,000 submissions from all over the planet. We put out a call on our app, which are the voices you're listening to here, and ...

JAD: We got 30,000?

ROBERT: No, we got 100.

JAD: All right.

ROBERT: But that's good for us. Okay. And clearly, people want to talk about their favorite numbers and about their reasons, which are from the heart.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: The number five was always a friend.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Because it feels like home and family, and it's kind of whole and balanced.]

ROBERT: People talked about it in emotional terms. There's this warmness, coolness, standoffishness, invitingness. It's a—there's a whole emotional landscape sitting here under the numbers. It has nothing to do with the numbers, really, but it's just there. It was there from the very start.

JAD: Okay.

ROBERT: First of all, where do numbers come from? Who invented them?

ALEX BELLOS: Well, it depends what you mean by "numbers." If by numbers you mean this idea that we can tell the difference between two things and three things, well, then we've had that ever since, you know, humans existed. And you can test animals and they do it too.

ROBERT: But if you're talking about symbols and words, abstractions to designate specific numbers ...

ALEX BELLOS: This is probably only about 5,000 years old, and was an invention of the Sumerians, which is basically Iraq.

ROBERT: And Alex says from the moment they came up with these symbols, they then added sort of extra layers of utterly un-number-y stuff.

ALEX BELLOS: Right.

ROBERT: Like, let's take the Sumerian word for "one."

ALEX BELLOS: And apologies for my accent in Sumerian. [laughs]

ROBERT: I could not be able to fault you. I'm—my Sumerian's been very rough.

ALEX BELLOS: I think it's "ges," which is G-E-S.

ROBERT: Which I usually say "Geh-hes."

ROBERT: Or however you say it. That's the word for "one."

ALEX BELLOS: And that is also the word for "fast."

ROBERT: Huh.

ALEX BELLOS: And the word for two is "min,"

ROBERT: Min.

ALEX BELLOS: Which is also the word for "woman." And one can only really speculate that there are—you know, why one is "man" and two is "woman." It could be ...

ROBERT: It could be they had some sort of Adam and Eve notion in mind. Like ...

ALEX BELLOS: Me first, you second. [laughs] Or could be our distinguishing feature is that we have one of what makes us a man, and the woman has two breasts.

JAD: What?

ROBERT: But look, whatever they were thinking, they were not the only ones to be thinking along these lines. You go forward 3,000 years, 3,000 years later, you get to Pythagoras, right?

ROBERT: The Pythagorean theorem guy?

ALEX BELLOS: Yes, so Pythagoras repeated the "one is male, two is female" thing by saying that odd numbers were masculine and even numbers were feminine.

ROBERT: Even tried to justify it by saying, "Look, do the—do the calculations here."

ALEX BELLOS: Because when you add even to odd ...

ROBERT: Say, three plus two.

ALEX BELLOS: You get odd.

ROBERT: Five.

ALEX BELLOS: Which means that when you add man to woman you get man. So man is kind of stronger than—than woman.

STEVE STROGATZ: By that logic, odd plus odd makes even.

ROBERT: Right.

STEVE STROGATZ: So what is that? Two males make a female?

ROBERT: [laughs]

STEVE STROGATZ: I mean, the whole thought is a little far-fetched to me.

ROBERT: So that is Steve Strogatz.

STEVE STROGATZ: Professor of math at Cornell.

ROBERT: A regular on our show.

STEVE STROGATZ: Friend of Radiolab.

ROBERT: Hater of the Pythagorean way of thinking about numbers—except for the triangle thing, which he loves. But—but here's what's weird is that, you know, go 5,000 years after the Sumerians and right up to the present time, when Alex does this worldwide survey, the what's-your-favorite-number thing, hears something weirdly familiar.

ALEX BELLOS: I will just read you, for example, some of the adjectives in reasons why people prefer the number one: strong.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Strong. Bold.]

ALEX BELLOS: Independent.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Independent.]

ALEX BELLOS: Honest.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Brave.]

ALEX BELLOS: Brave.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Different.]

ALEX BELLOS: Pioneering.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Lonesome.]

ALEX BELLOS: Lonely.

ROBERT: Cowboys! Those are cowboy words.

ALEX BELLOS: [laughs] Exactly.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I picture the number one as a man in a really nicely-tailored Italian suit. He's got dark hair. [laughs] I don't know why.]

JAD: It's like Marcello Mastroianni rather than John Wayne.

ROBERT: Exactly.

ALEX BELLOS: Two. Cautious. Wise. Pretty.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Soft. Nurturing. Old.]

ALEX BELLOS: Fragile.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Very personal, unintimidating.]

ALEX BELLOS: Open.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Uh, friendly?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Relational.]

ALEX BELLOS: Sympathetic.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Complimentary.]

ALEX BELLOS: Quiet.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Easy to understand.]

ALEX BELLOS: Flexible.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Makes more sense.]

ALEX BELLOS: They're kind of feminine.

ROBERT: They're kind of feminine.

JAD: Well, stereotypically feminine.

ROBERT: And these are both men and women contributing these descriptors for these two numbers.

ALEX BELLOS: Yes. Yes. That was really striking to me, and it made me think you know what? We could all laugh at Pythagoras and the Sumerians and all the kind of ancient people saying well, one is male and two is female, but some fragments of that remain.

JAD: Wait, this is not like a scientific study.

ROBERT: Well ...

JAD: It's just a survey.

ROBERT: ... actually ...

ALEX BELLOS: The more that you look, there's kind of some science behind it.

ROBERT: In fact, there's a guy and a study in Indiana. A place you know.

JAD: [laughs]

JAMES WILKIE: Uh, yes.

ROBERT: This guy.

JAMES WILKIE: James Wilkie, assistant professor of the University of Notre Dame.

ROBERT: So James and his team, here's what they do.

ALEX BELLOS: They take a baby that's just been born, only a few weeks old. Impossible to say just with the face whether it's a boy or girl. So you have to go 50/50.

ROBERT: They show people pictures of these androgynous little babies, and buried over on the side—you would hardly notice them ...

JAMES WILKIE: Are strings of four- or five-digit numbers.

ROBERT: Numbers happen to be either all even or all odd.

JAMES WILKIE: Right.
ROBERT: and James' guys say don't worry about those. They're there for the storage.

JAMES WILKIE: These are tracking numbers. Go ahead and ignore these.

ROBERT: Just focus on the babies in the pictures and tell us ...

ALEX BELLOS: Male or female?

ROBERT: Just look at the face and tell us whether it's a male or a female?

ALEX BELLOS: Mm-hmm. And it turns out that if a baby is next to odd digits, you're more likely to say that it's a boy than if the baby is next to even digits.

JAD: Really?

JAMES WILKIE: Yes.

JAD: Wait, how much more likely?

ROBERT: By a lot, or by a teeny bit?

JAMES WILKIE: By a statistically significant amount, not a landslide.

ROBERT: Do you yourself assign any gender to either one? Do you find odd a little more male in some ...?
ALEX BELLOS: No, not at all.

ROBERT: Not at all.

ALEX BELLOS: I've never felt that at all. I've known that they were a bit different because they sort of feel different.

ROBERT: So he decided to investigate.

ALEX BELLOS: Just to see if there's anything behind it. Yeah, why not?

ROBERT: Which led him—and us—to a guy named Greg Rowland.

GREG ROWLAND: Okay.

ROBERT: Okay, this is Robert.

GREG ROWLAND: Hi, Robert. How are you?

ANDY MILLS: This is Andy. I'm a producer working with Robert.

GREG ROWLAND: Hi, Andy.

ROBERT: So first of all, can you just tell us, like, what—you have a peculiar job, I guess. At least peculiar to me. Like, what do you do?

GREG ROWLAND: Well, I founded a company called The Semiotic Alliance.

ROBERT: Which is a business, right?

GREG ROWLAND: It is a consultancy, yeah.

ALEX BELLOS: So Greg is paid very good money by some of the biggest brands in the world ...

ROBERT: Coca-Cola, Ford, IBM ...

ALEX BELLOS: ... to give them advice about how their brands would go down.

GREG ROWLAND: We look at people's emotional responses to culture symbols and ideas. On the basis of this we can help companies with packaging, advertising.

ROBERT: And often, he says, what that means is helping companies harness the symbolic power of numbers.

JAD: [laughs]

GREG ROWLAND: I think one of the most exciting encounters with mathematics for me was with KFC.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: 11 herbs and spices.]

GREG ROWLAND: With the 11 herbs and spices.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: [singing] Serenade.]

GREG ROWLAND: 11, which is Kabbalistic in its—in its secrecy. Such a strange number!

ROBERT: [laughs] Well, I thought that Colonel Saunders was in his experimental kitchen, and just—and he just happened to ...

ANDY: It's "Sanders."

ROBERT: Oh, Sanders.

ANDY: He's Southern.

ROBERT: Oh, Sanders.

ANDY: Sanders.

ROBERT: Colonel Sanders was in his kitchen, and he was just fiddling around and he came up with 11 herbs—we call them herbs here—and spices.

GREG ROWLAND: Well, that's one version of the truth, but the symbolic truth is far more interesting and potent. 11 has, you know, enormous mystical potential simply because it's not 10 or 12 or five. It's not a sensible number.

ROBERT: What's wrong with 10? Like, if I say, "With my 10 herbs and spices?"

GREG ROWLAND: Because with 10, you're implying that you have a decimal balance at work. It's gonna be very hard to engage people emotionally with—with 10. 10 feels ordered, it feels highly rational.

ROBERT: Greg says it may have something to do with the fact that you have only 10 fingers. I mean, look at them. That's it. 10.

GREG ROWLAND: So 11, just is that extra one that has made Colonel Sanders uncopyable.

ROBERT: And the same thing might be happening with 501 jeans. Like, you know, why is it 501, Jad?

JAD: Hmm.

ROBERT: And not 500?

GREG ROWLAND: 501 again, has just gone one beyond the place you would expect to get to.

JAD: But wait a second. What if you don't want that? What if you want a product where you need to play it safe?

GREG ROWLAND: Well ...

ROBERT: Then you can stick with multiples of 10, which is really useful when you're trying to be practical or scientific.

GREG ROWLAND: Absolutely.

ROBERT: For example ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Mayday! Mayday! I'm being attacked by dirt! Oxy 10, we're winning the war against zits.]

ROBERT: Take the acne cream Oxy 10, which viewing your face I know you're not entirely unfamiliar with.

JAD: [laughs]

GREG ROWLAND: The 10 there is obviously, you know, that's where we get to a solution. That's where our—the fingers on our hands run out, so there is a sense of completion there that says we've gone through the process and we're gonna come out okay. And of course, that's why 11 is interesting because you're—you're embarking into the infinite at that point. You're going beyond the human finger count.

ROBERT: Oh, interesting!

JAD: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: 11 herbs and spices.

GREG ROWLAND: That's right.

ROBERT: Now—you say that as if you want to taste the thing.

STEVE STROGATZ: I do. Like, I used to love getting that as a kid.

ROBERT: But did not—did the 11—did the number 11 some tickle you in any way?

STEVE STROGATZ: Yes, definitely. Would not buy it with 10 herbs and spices. That sounds very solid and Stalinist.

ROBERT: [laughs] Really?

STEVE STROGATZ: No. I'm yanking—I'm yanking—I'm yanking your wishbone.

ROBERT: Oh really? I was kind of hoping you meant it.

STEVE STROGATZ: No. No, I don't mean it. No, come on.

JAD: I gotta agree with Steve. Like, the—the idea that 11 is mystical because it's one more than 10? Meh. Although with 10, I think he has a point.

STEVE STROGATZ: It is boring. I agree.

ROBERT: Here's just a fact: big companies with large checkbooks call Greg up all the time for advice.

GREG ROWLAND: I think the thing about numbers is that because they are so rational, so abstract, for that very reason they are to us in some way bizarre.

ROBERT: Hmm.

GREG ROWLAND: I think human beings have an absolute need to invest emotion—love hate fear—to invest the non-rational into things which seem almost obscenely rational.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: My magic number is number eight. I turned age 18 on October the 18, 1988.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Number four because I won a swimming race in lane four as a child.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: My favorite number is three because to me it recalls to mind the Trinity.]

ROBERT: Now however you feel about all this stuff, one thing that seemed pretty interesting to us— and to Alex—is you'd expect if you were asking the world to give you a favorite number, there'd be a huge difference from one culture to the next. 13 is an unlucky number. You don't have a 13th floor in America. In Korea, they don't have a fourth floor because it's unlucky four over there.

JAD: Really?

ROBERT: Yeah. But here's something interesting: the entire planet—all the continents and everyone in all the continents—came to a kind of consensus around one number.

ALEX BELLOS: Yeah.

ROBERT: So tell me, Alex, what was the world's favorite number?

ALEX BELLOS: I hope you got some good audio of a drumroll coming up. Maybe I'll do it myself. [drum roll] Seven.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: It's seven.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: My favorite number is seven.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I like the number seven.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: My favorite number is number seven.]

ROBERT: And we heard pretty much the same thing.

ROBERT: Boo!

ALEX BELLOS: In second place was three, and then third place was eight.

ROBERT: Yeah, but it was a big win for seven: 30 percent ahead of three.

ALEX BELLOS: I became really interested in seven because yes, we all know it's a favorite number, but why is it the people's favorite number? And when did that begin. And ...

ROBERT: I have one.

ALEX BELLOS: Oh great. I love reasons.

ROBERT: Holes in your head.

ALEX BELLOS: [laughs]

ROBERT: Ears, two and two. One and one. Nostrils, three and four. Five. Yeah, eyes six and seven. Yeah, yeah. Seven. Seven holes in your head.

JAD: There's no way that can be true.

ROBERT: Well, then look up at the night sky and be a Mesopotamian. So you don't have a telescope. What do you see? The sun, the moon and five planets. Seven. You spent the whole night looking at seven.

JAD: Yeah, all right.

ROBERT: Course, that's not what you hear from people.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: The number seven just looks beautiful.]

ROBERT: What you hear from people, it's about how beautiful it is.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I like the way it looks when I write it.]
JAD: It is a good-looking number.

ROBERT: Or how it sounds.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: It sounds beautiful. It sounds perfect.]

ROBERT: A lot of people came in about the sound.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: The sound of seven.]

JAD: I'd get on that train. I think seven comes out of your mouth real nicely. Seven! Sept!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I just feel like the number seven belongs to me, I guess.]

JAD: Sabea! It even sounds good in Arabic.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Sabea.

ROBERT: In Hebrew it's sheva.

JAD: Really?

ROBERT: Very similar. Siete.

JAD: Oh, it sounds great in Spanish.

ROBERT: Oh!

STEVE STROGATZ: This—this makes me feel a little sad, not to get silly on you, but there's a certain pleasure that people are getting that I'm not getting from numbers.

ROBERT: Ever?

STEVE STROGATZ: Because I feel like a—like, if someone says eight is curvy, part of me feels you're talking about the shape of the way that we draw the—the number eight as a numeral. That has nothing to do with the number eight.

ROBERT: What are you talking about? It's the way I see—you say "eight" to me, I see—I don't see eight apples, I see that curve—I see the two circles, one on top of the other resting comfortably.

STEVE STROGATZ: Makes me—that makes me sad. That makes me feel like you're missing the reality of the number eight, which is that eight has intrinsic properties. That's really dry speak, but eight—eight is a—I mean, like 10? Okay, 10 to me is much more like when you go to the bowling alley and the 10 pins are lined up in that triangle pattern.

ROBERT: Yeah.

STEVE STROGATZ: You know what I'm talking about?

ROBERT: Yeah.

STEVE STROGATZ: There's the one then the two then the three then the four. That is a gorgeous way to think about 10. 10 is about this magnificent symmetry that can make a triangle. But seven is a disaster as a mathematical object.

ROBERT: [laughs]

STEVE STROGATZ: I mean, it doesn't have nice symmetries. If I tried to put bowling pins down with seven, it's ugly however you arrange it. To me. So it makes me feel left out that I can't have the same fun that other people are having.

ROBERT: Okay, but if you asked Alex why is seven the world's favorite number, he says ...

ALEX BELLOS: It's because seven is arithmetically unique. It is the only digit of the first 10 numbers that can neither be multiplied or divided within the group. So one, two, three, four, five, we can double them.

ROBERT: And they stay under 10.

ALEX BELLOS: In the group. You've got to keep them in the group. Six. What's left? So okay, we have six, eight and 10. Those you can halve them. And the ones left are seven and nine, and nine you can divide by three. So seven is unique.

ROBERT: So you think that there's enough arithmetic in everybody that without having worked it out as painfully as you just did, people will still find that there's something unusual about seven mathematically? Not about memories, not about culture, not about shape, just about the math itself?

ALEX BELLOS: You cannot separate the math from all of those things. The way we understand numbers is to do with their arithmetic, and that it's the arithmetic has been absorbed by culture. And sort of the greatest example of that is the predominance of seven as the most special religious mystical number that there is.

JAD: Oh, so he thinks it's not so much that the culture has gotten in the math, it's the other way around, that the math actually was there first and that that got into the culture.

ROBERT: Yeah.

STEVE STROGATZ: [laughs] All right, you're making me feel better.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Would you like to thank somebody?
ROBERT: I would. I'd like to thank Steve Strogatz once again for joining us whenever we call him. And I'd like to thanks Alex Bellos, whose book is called The Grapes of Math: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life.

JAD: Okay, well we should go, I guess.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[LISTENER: This is Christine Quintana from Vancouver, BC. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, and by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

 

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