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What are some significant numbers or juxtapositions of numbers and quantities you often notices?
You may find it delightful to encounter sequences composed of prime numbers, or numbers who are divisors of each other. Maybe they're components of your first phone number, your first car license, your kid's birthday, the day a relative died, or the release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. What numbers and combinations of numbers you see everywhere that you find curious, amusing, or meaningful?
14 and 88 have recently (as of the past decade or so) been something I've paid a lot more attention towards. Those numbers have a strong meaning to white supremacists and nazis, and I've been sensitive to seeing them in various places. For example, back in 2018 there was a press release from the Dept. of Homeland Security that cause a bit of stir because it featured a title with 14 words, and it ended with an odd choice of statistic: "On average, out of 88 claims that pass the credible fear screening, fewer than 13 will ultimately result in a grant of asylum." Strange to round your base to 88 instead of something more common like 100, 50 or 10.
I'm not exactly amused when I notice these numbers, but they are significant and give me pause when I do notice them.
I think this may be reading way too much into it. 13 is a prime number. If you changed the base to 100 or 50 the other number would not be a whole number.
Racist dog whistles are more likely to be in big speeches and be more obvious than random numbers used in a statistic. Language like “thugs” and “those people” are more likely to be understood by the people a racist government official is trying to signal their beliefs to. Just including the number 88 in a random statistic is less likely to be seen by people or even understood by your target audience.
I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in early high school, and for some time afterwards I kept a semi-serious "42 sightings" journal to document whenever it popped up in a notable way. My favorite: when the local news (channel 42) reran a segment at 3:42 about a circus performer who was 4'2''.
Whenever someone I know well enough to joke with says "I have a question for you" without actually stating the question, I always respond with either "42 "or "square root of pi".
When I was a kid/teen, I had a friend whose phone number only had low digits (think something like 123-223-3314). And it was super easy to remember because of it (this was back when memorizing numbers was pretty useful).
So now, some two decades later, I find myself noticing whenever I encounter a phone number that only contains low numbers. And I still find them easier to remember, even though I don't really need to memorize any phone numbers any more. I even still remember that friend's number even though I haven't spoken to him in like ten years. I have like 5 total numbers memorized and one is his, lol.
In many countries in Africa, when you're buying your sim card it's common to be able to pick your number (often for an extra charge) in order to have one that's easily rememorable.
Some series of digits are much more satisfying than others even when there's no obvious reason, so when I've had to get a new phone number I search through the available numbers to find one which feels good and flows nicely. Prior to mobile phones I used to have an encyclopedic memory for phone numbers, recalling fifty or more at need, but lost that when our phones stored numbers for us.
I'm delighted by serial numbers, like when the time is 4:56 or 3:21, or the page of my book is 123. Series like 246 or 248 are nice too, and repeated digits 22, 33, etc. My real favorite though is finding a piece of the Fibonacci sequence: 112358.. I'm happy that my phone number includes part of that series.
My dorm room number was 222 when I moved in my freshman year. And coincidentally, my ip address on the network 10.x.x.222. there were about 150 people on the floor, so I was probably the only person that had that coincidence. For a long time I noticed it everywhere. I haven't in a long time though. It was actually nice when I would notice it because I'd get this quick nostalgia trip of my first year in university.
Other than that, I just noticed and memorize numbers all the time. Like I've memorized all my debit card numbers I've used in the last decade. And frustratingly, I had a card a while back where the expiration date was May 2018 (05-18), the security number was 581, and my PIN on the card was 0581. I immediately changed the PIN.
The username I've used everywhere for half my life is "Minion3665".
I don't know where the 3665 came from, probably it was randomly added after "Minion" was taken, but for years I've noticed and used the number 3665 everywhere.
Whenever I see it I have this immediate thought of "oh, that's me!" before I see what it's actually about.
Nowadays I tend to use only "minion" if it's available, but I still always notice the number 3665.
It being arbitrary is super nice since it doesn't leak any real information about you.
When working with anything related to transparency or blending modes in Photoshop, the number 25 keeps coming up, right when the image looks good. Idk if that was what you were asking, but I've seen it enough times that I immediately go to 25% opacity just to check to see if it automatically looks good.
As long as I can remember, digital clocks reading 1:34, 7:34, or 11:34. Uoside down it's 'hell'. I don't know where I learned that, and I'm sure it's Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but it still seems to happen a lot. Even on analogue clocks, which is further ridiculous.
12:34 on digital clocks, and palindrome numbers (I remember noticing these things way more often than mundane numbers are committed to memory for longer than normal).
I notice this almost every day, as well as 11:11. It's a weird feeling that I NEED to look at the clock at this time. It's been like this for almost 10 years now.
For some reason, SMS confirmation codes are always easy to remember and "cool-looking". I don't think they're purposefully generated like this, but in my experience they're very often something like 6626 or 482182.
Mine's similar. When I used an RSA hard token for work, I'd get a little rush if the number had something 'interesting' going on, eg, strings of numbers, repeats, etc. I'd also hurry up to try and use the interesting number before it refreshed.
This is not an answer to the question, but for those of you with (small enough) special numbers, here's a list of what makes many of the natural numbers uo to 9999 special from a mathematical perspective:
https://erich-friedman.github.io/numbers.html
My phone number (excluding the area code) can be said as a series of prime numbers. I love prime numbers, so I always found it fitting.