The results of an online survey reveal a world in love with numbers that stand out and feel exceptional 
 
 Brides. Sages. Days. Seas. Sins. Sisters. Dwarves. 
 
 When it comes to ancient myths, stories and traditions, humans have always favoured seven above other numbers. And this heptophilia continues to the present day. 
 
 Today I’m releasing the results of an online survey I set up to find the world’s favourite number. Drum roll please! The top ten are: 
 
 7 3 8 4 5 13 9 6 2 11 
 
 The number 7 would like to thank its agent, its mother and its fans. 
 
 Okay, so I’m having a bit of fun. But only to make a serious point. The aim of the survey was to research the emotional connection that people have with numbers. In what non-numerical ways are we influenced by arithmetical patterns? 
 
 I got interested in this area because, as a maths communicator, I am always asked for my favourite number. Whenever I give talks – in schools, universities, festivals and corporate events – it's guaranteed this question will come up. 
 
 At first I thought this favourite number interrogation was frivolous, a way of poking fun at me (or maths). But gradually I learned that many people have genuinely strong feelings about numbers, and this realisation prompted me to launch the survey. 
 
 The response surpassed my expectations. Within a few weeks more than 30,000 people had taken part, which is when I started to clean the data and analyse it. Total responses now stand at 44,000. 
 
 The survey only polled people who found out about it online, and who voluntarily decided to take part, which means that the results do not have the rigour of a professional opinion poll or a laboratory experiment. Yet even so it is revealing about our number choices. 
 
 
 
 A summary of the results are: 
 
 
 
 1,123 individual numbers were nominated from 30,025 submissions. 
 
 Almost half of the submissions were for the numbers between 1 and 10. 
 
 Every number between 1 and 100 was chosen. 
 
 472 numbers between 1 and 1000 were chosen. 
 
 The lowest whole number that received nul points was 110. 
 
 If we had to nominate a "least favourite number" – 110 wins that gong. 
 
 In fact, the humiliation of 110 is an example of the most striking pattern in the data, which is that round numbers are rarely chosen as favourite numbers. Numbers ending in 0 are particularly unloved, as are numbers ending in 5 (with the exception of 5 itself). 
 
 Why might this be so? I’d argue that because round numbers are often used as approximations, they feel both too common and too vague to inspire an emotional connection. We are sensitive to arithmetical patterns, and respond emotionally to them. 
 
 
 
 The survey also asked respondents to explain their choices, and the most common reason for having a favourite number was that it was the day on which you were born.But if you were born on the 10th, or the 20th or the 30th of the month you are a lot less likely to choose 10, 20 or 30 as your favourite number than you are to choose 3, 7 or 13 if you were born on the 3rd, 7th or 13th of the month. 
 
 What we want in a favourite number is a "sticky" number – a number that stands out, that feels exceptional. 
 
 Which is why 7 came out top. 
 
 Seven owes its striking success in my survey – and in global culture since antiquity – to its exceptional arithmetical properties. 
 
 
 
 If we consider only the numbers between 1 and 10, the basic number grouping, 7 is the only number that cannot be multiplied or divided within the group. 
 
 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 can be doubled. 
 
 6, 8 and 10 can be halved. 
 
 9 divides by 3. 
 
 7 is left on its own. 
 
 
 
 We love seven because it is unique. It reflects our uniqueness. Of course it’s the world’s favourite number. 
 
 Lucky 7 indeed. 
 
 The full results of the favourite number survey are available on the site favouritenumber.net. 
 
 If you are interested in this area, I discuss the survey, the cultural importance of 7 and other issues about our psychological responses to numbers in my new book Alex Through the Looking-Glass, out this week in the UK. The book will be out in June in the USA, called The Grapes of Math. ||||| If you're like the rest of the world, you probably long to feel unique. 
 
 Sure, the concept is a bit ironic. But we often make decisions based on a desire to stand out, from our sense of style to our musical tastes. What about when it comes to picking a favorite number? 
 
 It turns out the world’s favorite number is seven — at least, according a recent survey with more than 44,000 participants from all over the world. 
 
 Alex Bellos, the survey’s creator and author of the new book The Grapes of Math, says societies’ fondness for seven is a longstanding one, with deep cultural roots built around a desire to be unique. 
 
 Bellos first got curious about favorite numbers in response to constantly being asked what his favorite was. (For the record, he claims not to have one.) 
 
 “At first I was so annoyed by this question," Bellos says. "I thought, you know, you’re trivializing mathematics. Until I said, ‘Well, what’s your favorite number?’ And I realized that, actually, lots of people feel incredibly passionate about numbers. And more often than not, people will have an entire story about what number they like." 
 
 And the story of number seven goes back — way back, Bellos says, to ancient Babylon. 
 
 “The number seven has actually been cultures' favorite number since as long as we know. You go back to the earliest writers we have, and there are more sevens there than any other number." 
 
 The trend toward seven spreads across different cultures and different time periods, too. Most of the world follows the seven-day week. 
 
 In China, the number seven is linked to good luck. In the Bible, there are seven sins. We've got seven seas, seven brothers, even seven dwarves ... the list goes on and on. 
 
 But what explains this fondness? 
 
 “We react quite clearly to numbers in a way that relates to their numerical properties,” explains Bellos. 
 
 Even numbers — which can always be divided into two groups and are often used for approximations — feel both too common and too vague to inspire an emotional connection. As Bellos puts it, "Who likes number 30? No one." 
 
 But if we look at the first 10 digits — the numbers we can count on our hands, so the numbers Bellos says we’re most intimate with — seven is the only one that cannot be multiplied or divided within the group. 
 
 "One, two, three, four, and five you can double and they stay at 10 or under," explains Bellos. "Six, eight, and 10 can be halved, and nine can be divided by three." 
 
 Seven, it seems, stands alone. 
 
 But don't discount your feelings for your favorite digit. 
 
 "Numbers are supposed to be things which are abstract ideas that signify quantity and order," Bellos says. "But they have words and they have symbols, and so they're actually part of culture and we have a much more complicated and deep relationship to numbers. We can't just see the arithmetical difference as something abstract. We interpret because we're humans. It's kind of part of who we are to ascribe emotions to abstract concepts like numbers." 
 
 Do you have a favorite? What's the story behind your favorite number. Let us know in the comments. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
– It's important stuff as a child: one's favorite number. And that penchant for a special digit doesn't necessarily fade as adulthood sets in. As Dana Mackenzie writes for Nautilus, it was a question that Guardian math blogger Alex Bellos fielded so frequently that he decided to turn the tables on his readers with favouritenumber.net, a website that asked people to select their favorite, and explain why. The victor, per the 30,025 responses Bellos analyzed: 7. Though 1,123 numbers received nods, almost half of respondents professed to loving a number between one and 10. Indeed, from that range only "one" and "10" failed to qualify for the top 10, replaced by 11 and 13. Speaking to PRI, Bellos says our seven obsession is an ancient one, dating back to Babylon. "You go back to the earliest writers we have, and there are more sevens there than any other number." But Bellos wasn't just interested in the what—he wanted to suss out the why. The most popular reason given for selecting a number was that it was the participant's birthday. But someone born on the 10th was "a lot less likely to choose" that 10 as his favorite than someone born on the 13th, he found. That's because we want an "exceptional" number, Bellos posits. Even numbers feel vague, which could be why he says 110 is the best candidate for least favorite number. He tells Nautilus, "We use round numbers to mean approximate things. When we say 100, we don’t usually mean exactly 100, we mean around 100. So 100 seems incredibly vague. Why would you have something as your favorite that is so vague?"