Numbers

As we begin a new year on Friday I've been thinking about numbers.

We once had a dog that could count to five but anything more than that was just a lot. Probably since dogs have four feet and a tail the number, five, made sense to her.

I wonder when people first invented numbers. That must have been very early in our existence.

Since we have ten fingers it makes sense to have our mathematics based on the number, ten.

Long ago a mathematician named Edward Kasner coined the word, googol, to mean the number one followed by 100 zeros. In my youth I heard that term used to represent one number less than infinity, but that wasn't an accurate use of the term.

Then the internet company changed the spelling of that word to become Google. Of course you know what that is.

I googled Google and found 11,240,000,000 hits. That's a lot, but not nearly a googol.

People tend to be a bit superstitious about numbers. Thirteen is supposed to represent bad luck. I've heard that was because there were thirteen people, Jesus and his twelve disciples, at the Last Supper, or that there were thirteen people in a witch's coven. I doubt that either of those theories has been proven.

And lots of people thought the world would end in the year, 2000.  Obviously they were wrong.

Anyway, I hope the year 2016 is a good one for everyone.

Numbers

Why do people tend to be superstitious about numbers?

Thirteen is supposed to be evil either because there were thirteen people at the Last Supper or that many members in a witches coven.

And remember all the news about people who thought the year 2000 would be the second coming of Christ and the end of the world?

The dates 12/12/12 and 11/12/13 were supposed to be lucky days for a child to be born.

Personally, I'm not superstitious, but I do think number patterns are interesting. 

For instance, just this week we had 5/11/15 and 51115 is nicely symmetrical.

And last week on 5/4/15 spacey fans greeted each other by saying, "May the fourth be with you." I love that kind of humor!

What other number patterns can you think of?