Slicing cake all over the place

We made this Numberphile video...



Then this happened:







Hear a discussion about this - and viral videos in general - on Episode 15 of Hello Internet.

Popular Numbers

What is the most common "favourite number"?

This is something I recently stumbled upon in the course of making some Numberphile videos.

It all started in San Francisco at a YouTube EDU summit, where I met a bunch of clever YouTubers.

I took advantage of the situation and asked many of them: "What's your favourite number"?

Here's the resulting video:



I then invited the viewers to submit their favourite numbers, preferably with an explanation.

Thousands of people responded (and continue to do so!)

So with all this data, it seemed obvious some analysis should be done.

Unfortunately I lacked the time and skill for such an endeavour.

But fortunately a software writer named Dave Wiley (right), from Colorado, came to the rescue.

We had to draw a line in the sand (or we'd never have started) so selected the first 6,041 comments.

From these, Dave used a combination of programming and human checking to glean a list of 5,286 number choices.

Here's one observation Dave made about reading everyone's explanations: "It's people sharing a bit of themselves. I love these little glimpses into the way other people think."

How true.

So what were the results?

Well, the most commonly selected number was seven (238 votes).

Very close behind was three (225 votes).

Here are the numbers which achieved 100 votes:

1. Seven (238 votes)
2. Three (225)
3. Forty-Two (204)
4. Eight (202)
5. Thirteen (200)
6. Two (175)
7. Four (174)
8. Pi (152)
9. Seventeen (130)
10. Twelve (127)
11. Nine (126)
12. Five (123)
13. Sixty-Nine (118)
14. Twenty-Seven (113)
15. Twenty-One (111)
16. Eleven (105)
17. Golden Ratio (100)

Notable numbers with fewer votes included Zero (98 votes), One (73 votes) and 666 (18 votes).

Here's a graph of the top 25 - better quality versions of all these graphs can be found at the Numberphile Flickr page.

It was also interesting to note that odds slightly outperformed even numbers.

A normal arithmetic average is quite pointless (because some people chose HUGE numbers like Googolplex and the unimaginable Graham's Number).

But the median can be found quite easily and it lies at 16 (sixteen itself recorded 53 votes, by the way!).

Here's the video I made about all this:

And here are a couple more graphs (or here for higher quality):

SOME RANDOM FACTOIDS:

• Two people chose 40 and two people chose -40
• Dave used a C++ program to extract numbers from the YouTube page, followed by manual checks
• Many numbers were chosen because they represented people's birthdays
• Two and powers of 2 were popular with computer scientists
• Popular culture showed up often, such as Douglas Adams's famed 42 and the online slang 1337 (leet)
• 18 negative numbers were chosen - the lowest was -47

Dave also wanted everyone to know he his best to "properly record every vote whether it was expressed in English, as a number, as a formula or as a programming constant".

Finally, here are a selection of the many fascinating contributions people made (click here for the full comments section and read ALL of them):

"I have synesthesia, and this question is very tough for me. I used to like 3, 6, and 7. But now I feel closer to 8 and 11. 11 is so pure and pleasant, and 8 is like a gentle gay uncle."

"267. I'm a synesthete and I just like the colour combination of those numbers ^_^"

"Ok 03, no it CAN NOT be just 3. I don't know why it just can't."

"88 because it is symmetrical. You can draw a vertical or horizontal line through it and it's the same. It just always seemed very round and finalized to me. (:"

Subscriber number 300,000

Today Numberphile reached its 300,000th subscriber.

It's always hard figuring out exactly who the milestone subscriber is - but I think number 300,000 may have been Jordan, from London, Ontario.

Jordan told me: "I saw you enigma machine video when someone posted it on Reddit today and am slowly working through your other videos. I really like channels such as yours (or CGPGrey, Minute Physics and the like) with little bite size learning opportunities."

Numberphile reached 200,000 subscribers in November - here is an article about person number 200,000.

 

Two visits from VIVs

An unexpected pleasure of making popular YouTube videos is meeting fans - some of who make great efforts to visit us in person.

Two young lads recently joined this club and received treatment befitting any VIV (very important viewer).

AIDAN THE ADDICT

First, here is Aidan, a 10-year-old from here in the UK diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome and described by his dad Stuart as a "Numberphile Addict".

In an introductory email, Stuart explained: "We stumbled across the Numberphile videos and website, and he has started consuming them at a rate of knots. He has even started doing his homework whilst filming himself as a mini-video and 'presenting' what he is doing in the format of your films."

Aidan and his family visited the University of Nottingham and met various people from the videos - Ed Copeland, Phil Moriarty, Ria Symonds, Meghan Gray and Gerardo Adesso.

Here are some pictures:

But perhaps the best picture came after the visit from Stuart:

By way of explanation, Stuart said: "Just wanted to say another HUGE thank you for yesterday; as Aidan himself said, 'to leave with gold nano-particles, his own galaxy, the solution to the Rubik's cube, a good piece of homework from Ed, and of course THE brown paper, it was quite a good day!'

"I'm sure you'll already know this, but 'quite a good day' for a child like Aidan is the utmost of praise!

"I've attached an image of our journey home, which a couple have seen on twitter, but I think it sums up the day perfectly - Aidan is content with Leonard (his pet Lion!), and the only other time we have seen this look of contentment on his face was on the way home from his ASD assessment 6 months ago when he finally had a 'reason' to explain things to others!"

BIG FAN QUARRIE 

Another young Numberphile fan is nine-year-old Quarrie.

His family was visiting London from the US - but made a special trip up to Cambridge to see Quarrie's favourite YouTuber, Dr James Grime.

James showed Quarrie around his workplace and they even spotted Stephen Hawking!

Here are some pics from Quarrie's dad, Tim:

Tim told me in an email:  "James was incredible. I have never seen Quarrie smile so much. You know, James even took him up to see Stephen Hawking, and still, I think he was more impressed with James. That says a lot from a kid like Quarrie."

It's 200K-athryn

So Numberphile reached 200,000 subscribers today!

I tried to capture the moment for posterity, but my screen refreshing was not quick enough.

It has also been challenging to establish the identity of our 200,000th subscriber.

Anyway, it appears number 200,000 may have been this person!

Kathryn lives in Broomall, Pennsylvania (just outside Philadelphia).

She said: "I happened to come across your channel a few days ago. I'm horrible at math, but for some reason your channel just puts me in a better mood."

When not watching Numberphile, she is into musical theatre.

Number 200k may also have been Travis from Italy. 

He's 14 years old and said: "You're lucky because I'm good with English despite my young age. Even though I'm not perfect yet."

NOTE
Of course Numberphile has had many more than 200,000 people subscribe in total - nearly 218,000 in fact - but sadly we have lost some of them as time goes by. But Kathryn and Travis helped take us past 200,000 current subscribers.

ViHart in Numberphile Video

Rather frustratingly (and mysteriously) the latest Numberphile video was not "delivered" to all our YouTube subscribers.

The video is a guest appearance by fellow YouTuber and number lover, ViHart.

She rolls a Yahtzee in her own inimitable style - using tetrahedral dice.

If you like the video and want to help us right this technological wrong, please share the video with your like-minded friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, Google-Plus or whatever else you use!?

The weekly routine

My two big new projects for 2012 are Numberphile and Deep Sky Videos.

I'm being flexible about upload dates so the videos can react to what happens in the world (and space).

But as a general rule I am trying to upload Deep Sky Videos on Mondays and Thursdays.

Numberphile films go up on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Here are last week's additions...

MONDAY - The Elliptical Galaxy M105


TUESDAY - Why the fraction 3/4 is important in biology


THURSDAY - The Reflection Nebula M78


FRIDAY - Why the number one is NOT prime