What's your favourite number?

Red, no blue, arrrgh!

Still not believing I'm the only one who voted for eleventy so far.

progaeopteryx wrote: Googolplex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex

Googolplex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex

My favourite number is 56.

It all boils down to numbers and little teeny-weeny particles I can't see, but somehow I sense their presence.

laplace wrote: Vompatti wrote: Do you mean number as a mathematical object or should I also think of the sign for that number? Either way, it's impossible for me to choose, so I vote for other (don't explain), despite the fact that I just kind of explained. To answer your real question, some polls are fun on their own, this one isn't.  it doesn't have to be a number - it could equally be an amount or a digit

How could it be an amount? Is it really possible to have a favourite amount? Let's pretend for a while that my favourite amount is five. This means that I very much enjoy seeing and imagining groups of five objects. Groups of five objects have a mysteriously uplifting effect on me, while groups of four or six objects don't. I can test this by thinking of lemonade bottles. First I have in my mind an image of a solitary lemonade bottle. Needless to say it needs a friend. So I add one lemonade bottle in the image. Two bottles feels kind of disturbing, so I add a third one. Three bottles is nice, but the image still doesn't impress me much. Four bottles is almost worse than two. But five! Imagining five lemonade bottles is an unexplainably stunning experience. I can repeat the same experiment with apples and come to the conclusion that my favourite amount is five.

So my favourite amount is five. One might think that it pleases me to see a group of five objects, no matter what the objects are. But this is clearly not the case. What if I tried to imagine five South Park characters? There's Cartman, Kenny, Kyle and Stan, and some fifth guy. It could be Chef. It could be Mr Garrison. Whoever it is, I think it's clear that he (or she) is a bit of an outsider. If I had an image of the four main characters + some random guy, I think it's obvious that I'd like to get rid of the fifth character and have a more perfect image with just four characters. Should this mean that my favourite amount is four? No! Remember what happened with the lemonade bottles and the apples! My favourite amount could be five or four, depending on the objects related to that amount.

Does this necessarily mean that I don't have a favourite amount per se? Perhaps not. I could say that in most cases I enjoy groups of five objects, so my favourite amount is five. Maybe I've imagined several groups of objects and come to think that almost every time five objects is the perfect amount. But shouldn't I also take into account all the types of objects I haven't thought of? If I consider all the objects I know, if I make a list of them and notice that five is my favourite amount in almost all of the cases, I could say that my favourite amount is five. But what if someone asks me: "Have you thought of monocles? Have you thought of Antikythera machines?" I would have to reply that in those cases my favourite amount is one, not five. If offered enough examples I would have to say that my favourite amount is in fact one, not five. Now, should I say that my favourite amount has changed, or that my favourite amount has been one all along, that it was a mistake of me to think it was five? If I do have a favourite amount that remains the same through all my life, wouldn't I have to think of all possible objects to know for sure what this favourite amount is? Since this is clearly impossible I'm forced to conclude that either I don't have a favourite amount at all, or that I do have a favourite amount, but it's impossible for me to know what it is.

HughesJB4 wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: Where's pi?   Or the price of a pie? Can we get a pie for approximately $3.14?

Of course not!

$3.99 or $3.88, which probably is one of the things that explains why there is something fundamentally wrong with the universe.

Where's pi?

ClemofNazareth wrote: rushfan4 wrote: ^ That is actually a Three Dog Night song.    ^ That is actually a Harry Nilsson song that Three Dog Night made famous.