Radiolab - For the Love of Numbers

Episode Date: May 2, 2014

It’s hard to think of anything more rational, more logical and impersonal than a number. But what if we’re all, universally, also deeply attuned to how numbers … feel? Why 2 is warm, 7 is strong and 11 is downright mystical.    

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. Shorts! From W. N. Y. C.

See? Yes. And NPR. Three, two, one. Hey, I'm Chad, I'm Robynch. This is Radio Lab. And is this. Like this?

This is Alex Bellows. Okay. He's a writer. He's written a lot about sports, particularly about Brazilian soccer, but also math, or he likes to say maths. 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 talk, there'd always 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. You don't have a favorite number? No, I think it's stupid. But no, that's correct. I did think it was stupid. I just didn't have one. Okay. And why would the question annoy him?

It seems to me it's the most normal question you could ask. Well, but remember, 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. I got so infrearated 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, oh, 12. And I was shocked and said, what, you, you weren't asking me because you were kind of taking piss out of the math mo. 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 and said, well, who he 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 be like a rabid anti-smoker, I went from being, you know, favorite number agnostic

to being obsessed with favorite numbers. He started a website. Favorite number.net. You know, just asking people the question. And I put it out there. And I helped them out on my blog. And I had, within the first few weeks, actually, more than 30,000 people. Hello? Hello. Hi. From all over the world.

This is Jani from Dubai. Darren Skis. Sydney, Australia. Montevideo, Uruguay. Poshka, Norway. Telling me their favorite numbers. My favorite number is definitely 8.30. 29. 11. And the reasons why.

The reason it's for is because my favorite card is the ace of spades. and it's commonly called the death card. My birth date is 414-59, so 5 from 9 is 4. My favorite number is 100 because it has two zeros. 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 we got 30,000. No, we got a hundred. That's good for us. Okay. Clearly, people want to talk about their favorite numbers and about their reasons, which are from the heart. The number five was always a friend. It feels like home and family, and it's kind of whole and balanced. People talked about it in emotional terms.

There's warmness, coolness, stalled-offishness, invitingness. There's a whole emotional landscapes in here under the numbers. So nothing to do the numbers, really. It's just there. It was there from the very start. Okay. First of all, where do numbers come? Who invented them?

Well, it depends what you mean by numbers. If by numbers 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. But if you're talking about symbols and words, abstractions to designate specific numbers? This is probably only about 5,000 years old and was an invention of the Sumerians, which is basically Iraq. And Alex says from the moment they came up with these symbols, they then added sort of extra layers of utterly unnumbery stuff.

Right. Like, let's take the Sumerian word for one. And apologies for my accent in Sumerian. I would not be able to fault you. My Sumerian's been very rough. I mean, it's GES, which is GES. I usually say GERS, GES, GER. However you say it.

That's the word for one. And that is also the word for phallus. And the word for two is min, which is also the word for woman. And one can only really speculate, but there are, you know, why one is man and two is women. It could be... Could be they had some sort of Adam and Eve notion in mine?

Like, me first, you second. Or could be our distinguishing feature is that we have one of what makes us a man and some woman has two breasts. Look, 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? The Pythagorean theorem guy? Yeah, so Pythagoras repeated the one is male, two is female thing by saying that odd numbers were masculine and even numbers were feminine.

Even tried to justify by saying, look, do the calculations here. Because when you add even to odd, say three plus two, you get odd. you get odd. Five. Which means that when you add man to women, you get a man, so man is kind of stronger than women.

By that logic, odd plus odd makes even. So what is that? Two males make a female? I mean, the whole thought is a little far-fetched to me. So that is Steve Stroggatz.

Professor of Math at Cornell. A regular on our show. Friend of Radio Lab. Hater of the Pythagorean way of thinking about numbers, except for the triangle thing which he loves. But here's what's weird is it, you know, go 5,000 years after the Sumerians and right up to the present time. When Alex does this worldwide survey, though, what's your favorite number thing? Here's something weirdly familiar.

I will just read you, for example, some of the adjectives in reasons why people prefer the number one. Strong. Strong, bold, independent, honest, brave. Brave, pioneering, lonely. Cowboys, those are cowboy words. Exactly. I picture the number one as a man in a really nicely tailored Italian suit. He's got dark hair.

I don't know why. It's like Marcella Maastriani rather than John Wayne right there. Two. Cautious, wise, pretty. Soft, nurturing, whole. Fragile. Very personal, un-intimidating. friendly,

relational, sympathetic, complimentary, quiet, easy to understand, flexible, makes more sense. They're kind of feminine. Well, stereotypically feminine. And these are both men and women

contributing these descriptors for these two numbers. Yeah, yeah, that was really striking to me and it made me think, do 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 the... that remain.

What did ways, this is not like a scientific study. Well, actually. The more that you look, there is kind of some science behind it. In fact, there's a guy and a study in Indiana, a place you know. Uh, yes. This guy. James Wilkie, assistant professor of the university in Ordain. So James and his team, here's what they do.

They take a baby that's just been born, maybe a few weeks old. Impossible to say just with the face, whether it's pyro girl. So you have to go 50-50. They show people pictures of these androgynous little babies and buried over on the side where you would hardly notice them. Are strings of four or five digit numbers? Numbers happen to be either all even or all odd. Right.

And James's guys say, don't worry about those. They're for the storage. These are tracking numbers. Go ahead and ignore these. Just focus on the babies in the pictures and tell us... Male or female. Just look at the face and tell us whether it's a male or a female. And it turns out that if a baby is next to odd digits,

you're more likely to say that it's a boy that if the baby is next to even digits. Really? Yes. How much more likely? By a lot or by a teeny bit? By a statistically significant amount, not a landslide. Do you yourself assign any gender to either one?

Do you find odd a little more male in some... No, not at all. Not at all. I've never felt that at all. I've known that they were a bit different because they sort of feel different. So he decided to investigate. Just to see if there's anything behind it.

Yeah. Why not? Which led him and us to a guy named Greg Rowland. Okay. Okay. This is Robert. Hi, Robert. How are you?

This is Andy. I'm a producer working with Robert. Hi, Andy. So, Fraselow, can you just tell us, like, you have a peculiar job, I guess, at least peculiar to me. Like, what do you do? Well, I founded a company called the Semiotic Alliance. Which is a business, right? It is a consultancy, yeah.

So Greg is paid very good money by some of the biggest brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Four. IBM. To give them advice about how their brands would go down. We look at people's emotional responses to culture, symbols and ideas. On the basis of this, we can help companies with packaging, advertising. And often he says what that means is he's helping companies harness the symbolic power of numbers. I think one of the most exciting encounters with mathematics for me was with KFC.

With the 11 herbs and spices. Season made. Eleven, which is cabalistic in its secrecy, such a strange number. Well, I thought that Colonel Saunders was in his experimental kitchen and just happened to... He's Southern. He's Southern.

Oh, Sanders. 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. Well, that's one version of the truth, but the symbolic truth is far more interesting and potent. 11 has enormous mystical potential,

simply because it's not 10 or 12 or 5. It's not a sensible number. What's wrong with 10? If I say with my 10 herbs and spices. Because with 10, you're implying that you have a decimal balance at work. It's going to be very hard to engage people emotionally with 10. 10 feels ordered, feels highly rational. 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. So 11, just is that extra one that has made Colonel Sanders uncopyable. And the same thing might be happening with 501 genes. Like, you know, why is it 501, Jad? And not 500. 501, again, has just gone one beyond the place you would expect to get to. Wait, wait a second. What if you don't want that? What if you want a product where you need to play it safe?

Well... Then you can stick with multiples of 10, which is really useful when you're trying to be practical or scientific. Absolutely. For example. Mayday! Mayday! I'm being attacked by Zitz!

OxyTem. We're winning the war against SITS. Take the Acby cream, OxyTem. Which, viewing your face, I know you're not entirely unfamiliar with. The 10 there is obviously, you know, that's where we get to a solution. That's where the fingers on our hands run out. So there is a sense of completion there.

The sense of we've gone through the process and we're going to come out okay. And of course, that's why 11 is interesting because you're embarking into the infinite at that point. You'll go and be on the human finger count. Ah, interesting. 11 herbs and spices.

That's right. Now, did you say that as if you want to taste the thing? I do. I used to love getting that as a kid. But did the 11, did the number 11, tickle you in any way? Yes, definitely. Would not buy it with 10 herbs and spices? That sounds very solid and Stalinist. Really? No. I'm yanking, I'm yanking your wishbone. Oh, really? I was kind of hoping you meant it. No. I don't mean it. No, come on. I got to agree with Steve, like the idea that 11 is mystical,

because it's one more than 10. Although with 10, I think he has a point. It is boring. I agree. Here's just a fact. Big companies with large checkbooks, call Greg up all the time for advice. 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. I think human beings have an absolute need to invest emotion, love, hate, fear, to invest a non-rational into things which seem almost obscenely rational.

My magic number is number eight. I turned age 18 on October the 18th, 1988. Number four, because I won a swimming race in Lane 4 as a child. My favorite number is three, because to me, it recalls to mind the Trinity. 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. Really? 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. Yeah. So tell me, Alex, what was the world's favorite number? I hope you've got some good audio of a drum roll coming up.

Yeah, well, of myself. Seven. It's seven. My favorite number is seven. I like the number seven. My favorite number is number seven. And we heard pretty much the same thing. In second place was three, and the third place was eight.

Yeah, but it was a big win for seven, 30% ahead of three. I became really interested in seven because, yes, we all know it's the favorite number. But why is it the people's favorite number? And when did that begin? I have one. Oh, great. I love hearing reasons. Holes in your head.

Years two and two, one in one. Nossils three and four. Five? Yeah, six and seven. Yeah, seven. Seven holes in your head. There's no way that can be true. 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 spend the whole night looking at seven. Yeah, all right. Of course, that's not what you hear from people. The number seven just looks beautiful.

What you hear from people, it's about how beautiful it is. I like the way it looks when I write it. It's a good-looking number. Or how it sounds. Sounds beautiful. Sounds perfect. A lot of people came in about the same. The sound of seven.

I get on that train, I think seven comes out of your mouth real nicely. Seven. Set. I just feel like the number seven belongs to me, I guess. Selah. It even sounds good in Arabic. Yeah. Hebrew Sheva.

Really? Very similar. Siette. Oh, it sounds great. It's Spanish. 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. ever?

Because I feel like if someone says eight is curvy, part of me feels you're talking about the shape of the way that we draw the number eight as a numeral. That has nothing to do with the number eight. 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. 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 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. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. There's the one, then the two, then the three, then the four. That is a gorgeous way to think about 10. Ten is about this magnificent symmetry that can make a triangle. But seven is a disaster as a mathematical object. 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.

Okay, but if you ask Alex, why is seven the world's favorite number? He says. It's because seven is arithmetically unique. It's the only digit of the first 10 numbers that can neither be multiplied or divided within the group. So, one to three, four, five, we can double them. And they stay under ten. In the group. You've got to keep them in the group. Six, what's left?

So we had six, eight, and ten. Those, you can half them. And the ones left are seven and nine. And nine you can divide by three. So seven is unique. 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. 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. thought there is. Oh, so he thinks it's not so much that the culture has gotten into the math.

It's the other way around, that the math actually was there first and that got into the culture. Yeah. All right, you're making me feel better. Would you like to thank somebody? I would. I like to thank Steve Stroggatz once again for joining us whenever we call him.

I'd like to thank Alex Belos, whose book is called The Grapes of Math, how life reflects numbers and numbers reflect life. All right, well, we should go, I guess. Yeah. I'm Jedd-I. I'm Robert Krollwich.

Thanks for listening. This is Christine Quintana from Vancouver, BC. Radio Lab 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.