Is it something about wholeness? Or milestones? But we certainly do like round numbers.
Of course, our numbers are social constructs. Our days and years are determined by the planet we are living on. Our number system is decimal presumably because we all start our early-years arithmetic by counting on our fingers - of which, on the last count, there are ten.
I remember back in middle school, I was actually quite good at math (my strength was in coming up with short, elegant solutions for geometry problems, but I also did well on logic, not so well on algebra), going to math competitions every year and often managing to do well enough to go through school, county, city (yes, Belgrade is big so it is composed of several counties) levels, but I never managed to get to the state or federal level, not to mention the Math Olympics - that was reserved for math geniuses.
As part of preparation for competition we had many, many volumes of collected problems from the past competitions at all levels and the only one I remember still, decades later, has something to do with our love for whole numbers and the way society builds a numbering system.
The problem, at first sight, looked deceptively simple - it was just yet another one of those calculations of the age of a person if you know the ages and/or relationships between the ages of several other people (e.g., A is 10, B will be twice as old as C in two years from now, how old is D?). So we thought nothing of it and started crunching numbers with glee....until we realized we could not do it - something was wrong, our numbers were all out of whack. What happenned?
Well, I am proud that I was the one who figured it out. You see, in order to make the problem a little more fun, they did not use Earthlings in this one, but Martians instead. And they even put a little cartoon picture of a smiling Martian right next to the problem. And, as it turned out, the picture was the clue. How often do you ever see a picture associated with a math problem, after all? The Martian in the picture had three fingers on each hand! The problem was really easy to solve using the number system with a base of 6!
Anyway, this whole rambling post about our love for whole numbers was inspired by a round number that happenned today (under the fold):
I just got my 300,000th visitor since the move to Seed:
I still have no idea why so many people come here - and not just once but repeatedly - but I am flattered nonetheless. Thank you all.
Update: Today I also got the 4000th comment. That's nice!
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Not a problem, boss. The bill is in the mail.
~:o)
On a serious note though, could it be that your readers associate this blog toyour friendliness and brilliantly shining smiling face? Please don't get me wrong.
I mean, besides reading the awesome science stuff, it is always nice to feel accepted and a part of.
You do that very well and it is much appreciated by me, as I'm sure it is with most others more often than not.
Thanks, Couternix.
Yer ahight.
I agree with Saboma. I like you more than the blog but just barely. ;) You're both awesome!
Excerpted from:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RoundNumber.html
"A round number is a number that is the product of a considerable number of comparatively small factors (Hardy 1999, p. 48). Round numbers are very rare. As Hardy (1999, p. 48) notes, 'Half the numbers are divisible by 2, one-third by 3, one-sixth by both 2 and 3, and so on. Surely, then we may expect most numbers to have a large number of factors. But the facts seem to show the opposite.'"
There is no number rounder than zero.
It has apparently become my role in life to try to get across, especially to SciBloggers who should know better, that there is a difference between "number" and "numeral". I would think that, with your example of the Martian with six fingers, that you would have gotten that concept and would now be more precise in your use of the terms. Hardy, as in Jonathan's comment, was talking about "numbers". you are talking about "numerals". It is the difference between an idea and a symbol to represent that idea. We use the decimal NUMERATION system. The Romans used Roman NUMERALS - not Roman numbers. The reason that I have taken on this role in life is that I feel that the lack of understanding of this concept is at the heart of the problem that students have with algebra - as you did. If I can get enough "science" people to understand the difference, maybe it will eventually trickle down to Algebra teachers and remove some of the mystery from that subject.
Ah, but back in that days I knew the difference between 'broj' and 'cifra' in Serbian. I just never learned the equivalent terms in English. Thank you for getting that straight.