7 ms·
Thirty Seven
- jetru 3y agoContext: new veritasium video about this
- dschroer 3y agoThere is something nice and pure about this site. It is probably just coincidence and random that the number 37 is seen around. Likely something along the lines of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. However none of that matters. What matters is the site is there for all of us to enjoy. It made me smile and I appreciate that.
- jacknews 3y agonice, maybe every number should have it's own similar page 42 is an obvious choice. Picked at random while gazing through the garden window, so claimed the author, be we all know the truth; there are 42 young tableaux of size 3x3, which represent some of the fundamentals of the universe and everything lol
- anonymousd3vil 3y ago> nice, maybe every number should have it's own similar page Exactly, I feel the same. There is a saying that goes "If you look close enough you start making connections in random coincidences" or something.
- golergka 3y agoProbably posted because of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98 Which not only links to this website, but also explains the topic in detail. Can highly recommend the channel anyway — especially for the HN crowd.
- nomemory 3y agoOne or two years ago I've written a small blog post about the number 37. Yesterday the traffic on that page exploded. I am sure it's related to the Veritasium movie.
- canistel 3y agoIn the number guessing trick popularised by David Blaine 37 is the most probable answer. 13, I think, is the second probable, which is interestingly 50 minus 37. https://www.cs4fn.org/mathemagic/streetmagic.php https://www.cs4fn.org/mathemagic/streetmagic.php
- Modified3019 3y agoI’ve seen reference that people tend to bias towards odd numbers for “random” numbers. I wouldn’t be surprised if we consider prime numbers to “be even more randomer”.
- Modified3019 3y agoNot planning to spiral off into real research to see if odd bias is a real thing or apocrypha, but these were interesting: https://uxdesign.cc/odd-vs-even-number-psychology-6307047bf5de https://uxdesign.cc/odd-vs-even-number-psychology-6307047bf5... https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/acow6y/asking_over_8500_students_to_pick_a_random_number/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/acow6y/ask... 7 is definitely a favorite at least.
- latexr 3y ago> I’ve seen reference that people tend to bias towards odd numbers for “random” numbers. I can see the logic behind that, but for the trick in question it’s not like they have a choice (emphasis added): > Ask your friend to quickly think of a two-digit number between 1 and 100, both digits odd and both digits different from each other. One thing they don’t mention on the page is that after all the constraints, only a fifth of the original hundred are valid choices: 13, 15, 17, 19, 31, 35, 37, 39, 51, 53, 57, 59, 71, 73, 75, 79, 91, 93, 95, 97. So while on the surface it may seem like you’re guessing one number out of a hundred, you’re guessing one out of twenty.
- sillywalk 3y ago37 always reminds me of the movie Clerks.
- Karellen 3y agoIn a row?
- goshua 3y agoMankind constantly analyzes radio waves from outer space in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Since this analysis started, almost all of the signal sources have been identified. 37 signals, however, remain unexplained. https://37signals.com/37 https://37signals.com/37
- semi-extrinsic 3y agoThe 37 number comes from a single 1993 paper on a search programme for extraterrestrial hydrogen line beacons. Unless you believe that nothing has happened in radioastronomy for the past 31 years, there is no reason that this number remains 37 today. This page is either clueless or firmly tongue-in-cheek.
- Twirrim 3y agoFolks that are Star Trek geeks are probably familiar with the number 47, which has a storied history, with claims about how it's is, in fact, the most likely to occur random number, etc. etc, coming out from a society at Pomona College http://47.net/47society/ http://47.net/47society/ The Star Trek link is because Trek writer Joe Menosky is a Pomona graduate, and started to include references to the number 47 (and the reverse, 74) in his scripts, starting in TNG season 4, and it started to take off amongst the staff. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Memory_Alpha:Projects/47_project https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Memory_Alpha:Projects/4...
- shmerl 3y ago52 and a half: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pomQy5JkRAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pomQy5JkRAw
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fuzztester 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/37_(number) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/37_(number) Also, while fooling around with my calculator in school, years ago, I had noticed this pattern: 37 x 3 = 111 37 x 6 = 222 37 x 9 = 333 and so on. I tried it again just now, all the way up to 37 x 51. It works perfectly upto 37 x 27 = 999 After that the pattern changes somewhat, but still seems to have some sort of regularity to it.
- fuzztester 3y agoAlso, not 37, but close: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Nine_Steps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Nine_Steps That was a novel I enjoyed reading around the same time, in college.
- sans_souse 3y agohe took two too many steps
- fuzztester 3y agoHa ha, clever :)
- jameshart 3y agoAt that point you’re really just exploring the integer multiples of 111, where it’s perhaps not surprising to find patterns in base 10, since 111 is 10^0+10^1+10^2, and two digit integers you multiply it by are going to be of the form A10^0+B10^1, so the resulting numbers are all going to be A10^0+(A+B)10^1+(A+B)10^2+B10^3. When A+B < 10, that’s going to form a pleasing pattern as you increment through As and Bs. The pattern should actually be fine up to 37*54 = (37*3)*18 = 1998; it breaks at 37*57 because that’s (37*3)*19 and 1+9 isn’t less than 10. Similarly interesting patterns will crop up when multiplying 1111 or 11111 by integers - and similarly in other bases as well (identically, in fact - multiples of 0x111 include 0x1221, 0x1332, etc) So this sort of reduces to ‘I guess It’s funny that 111 is 37*3’.. but on some level, that’s just how numbers work. Every number has a prime factorization. 1111’s prime factors are 11 and 101. 0x111’s prime factors are 0x3, 0x7 and 0xD; 111’s just happen to be 3 and 37. That said… it turns out 37 crops up as a prime factor of 111, 111111, 111111111, 111111111111… so there’s something a little more going on here… Although even that is really just because each of those numbers is 111* a number of the form 1001…001001001 - 1000^0+1000^1+…+1000^n
- 01100011 3y agoDon't forget 23: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma
- h1fra 3y agoAdded Context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98
- milliams 3y agoA "factoid" is not a "small fact", it is "something that looks like a fact" (cf. 'android' or 'humanoid'). A better word for this kind of small fact would be "factlet".
- ergonaught 3y agoThe other definition of "factoid" (OED's "brief or trivial piece of information, esp. any of a list of such items presented together") is literally the only usage I have encountered for the word in the past 40 years.
- g4zj 3y agoOr simply "fact".
- forgotmyinfo 3y agoUnfortunately, language is fluid and changing. You can try to hang on by your fingernails, or you can go with the flow.
- card_zero 3y agoOr fight back! Sometimes successfully. Popular usage is not immune to deliberate attempts to change (or freeze) the language. Prescriptivism is thus a subset of descriptivism.
- Electricniko 3y agoYou factist!
- k4rli 3y agoYour entitled to you're own opinion. So if the majority use the language in the wrong way, language itself is the problem?
- owisd 3y agoasteroid - something that looks like a star, rule checks out.
- freezystem 3y agoThis video of Veritasium just came out yesterday. Coincidences !? I THINK NOT XD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98
- TomNomNom 3y agoA ~20 minute video on a particular number cropping up all over the place and not one mention of the frequency illusion / Baader–Meinhof phenomenon feels at least a little bit disingenuous. I don't doubt that it crops up a lot when people are asked for a random number between 1 and 100 (especially if, as per the video, you ignore 1, 2, 7, 42, 69, 73, and 77, and sometimes 99 and 100), but it's pretty disappointing for a big channel based around science like Veritasium to not even mention that if you became obsessed with and went hunting for special properties of a different number between 1 and 100 you'd almost certainly find them.
- jerf 3y ago"The Law of Fives states simply that: ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO FIVE. The Law of Fives is never wrong. In the Erisian Archives is an old memo from Omar to Mal-2: 'I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look.'" - Principia Discordia, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Principia_Discordia#THE_LAW_OF_FIVES https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Principia_Discordia#THE_LAW_OF...
- Sporktacular 3y agoIt's not the first time Veritasium's scientific credentials could be questioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- perebaj 3y agoWHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT?
- eliben 3y agoReminds me of the proof that every number is interesting; it's a fun one to discuss with the kids.
- sestep 3y agoIt is a fun proof! I'm trying to understand why it's not actually valid; is the idea similar to the sorites paradox?
- jerf 3y agoIt is valid, it is just that the resulting definition of "interesting" is itself uninteresting. The value of a distinguishing function is its ability to split its inputs into various buckets. In this case the "interesting" is just the identity function again; you put in "the set of all numbers" and you get back out "the set of all numbers". While you can create super convoluted function descriptions that map to the identity function, they're really all the same. To a first approximation, at least. As is always the case in math, you can always split finer, and the field of math readers of HN are most familiar with, computation, you can have visible differences in the performance of one identity function versus another. But broadly speaking from a "conventional" mathematical perspective, they're all the same and uninteresting. If you also want to get all mathy, the argument does depend on the set of numbers being ordered. It breaks down on numbers that aren't, so, for instance, the proof nominally proves that all integers are interesting (since orders on those exist) but it is invalid on real numbers, complex numbers, and a lot of other things that lack orderings, because there is no first "uninteresting real number".
- gbacon 3y agoEvery number’s sacred Every number’s great When a number’s wasted … Nope, won’t eventuate
- tigerlily 3y ago...God needs ev'ry number To enumerate!
- fortyseven 3y agoIt's no 47, but...
- spirit557 3y agoDoes anyone else have this experience - The "old" pre-mobile phone style sites that were written without any "mobile experience" in mind are actually the most pleasant and easy to use on a phone (with just some extra zoom needed sometimes) while the mobile version of countless sites are actually the worst? Ironic isn't it.
- caleb-allen 3y agoI mean, HTML was originally invented as an interchange format so that the client could adapt it back into whatever form was suitable.
- corytheboyd 3y agoNot really, the constant zooming is pretty awkward. I know this is the wrong opinion to have on HN, but at least having the content scale to the viewport appropriately is a much nicer experience. Don’t get me wrong either, this is still a much much better mobile experience than popover garbage and JS dynamic wank.
- bigyikes 3y agoAgree. The website is not usable with one thumb on mobile. Maybe language models will bring back the concept of a “user agent”. One could imagine feeding a GPT the source for this page and receiving mobile-friendly source as output. I’m looking forward to the day where the AI screens all markup rendered in my browser. (Let’s not think of how power inefficient this would be…)
- corytheboyd 3y agoThat's certainly one way to add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> :p
- williamdclt 3y agoI really don’t have this experience. I’d say these old-school sites are _not the worst_, and that _some_ mobile version of some websites manage to do worse. But it’s not a particularly pleasant experience, no
- nobleach 3y agoHoly Geocities/Angelfire/Tripod! I love looking at this site!
- nvader 3y agoTo add to the list of coincidences of this popping up now, I will turn 37 this year!
- mag3737 3y agoThe creator of the page discussed here did so while working at NCSA on the Mosaic web browser. All you young people can ask ChatGPT what that is. And by the way, at the time he knew very well, tyvm, all the meanings of the word "factoid".