red + icul + ous = 23!!!
May1
Today I saw the movie “23″, starring Jim Carrey. It came out in about 2007. The movie is based around the myth that everything is somehow correlated with the number 23. You can read more about it here.
Now, 23 isn’t the most common number, so it would be incredibly coincidental to show up everywhere. But what about permutations of 23? We’re talking maybe the digits 2 and 3, or maybe 3 and 2. Maybe the numbers add up to 23. Or maybe it’s 5 (2+3) or 1 (3-2)? Let’s a little bit deeper into that.
There are four single-digit numbers related to 23: 1, 2, 3, and 5. Now let’s include multiples: 2*3 = 6. So 1,2,3,5, and 6. That’s 50% of all single digit numbers. So, if it’s a single digit number, there’s already a 1/2 chance that it has to do with 23.
But that’s not really a big deal. In fact, any two-digit number has at least a 40% chance or being related. Let’s take a look at another unrelated number, like 76. Let’s see the single digits correlated to it:
7, 6, 7+6 = 13. 7*6 = 42, so:
1,2,3,6, and 7 have to do with 76. What? There’s also a 1/2 chance this is possible to? How is this possible? Well, it’s just looking at a problem creativly.
How about number that add up to 23? There’s 22 different combinations of those. As for numbers that subtract to 23? Since there’s infinite numbers, there’s also an infinite number of combinations that subtract to 23:
24 – 1 = 23
25 – 2 = 23
26 – 3 = 23
and so, continuing to infinity.
Of course, adding and subtracting to another number is just as likely. Infinite combinations for adding and subtracting.
Now how about adding more than 2? I’m not going to talk about subtraction from now on, since there’s infinite combinations.
For 3 digits, such as:
21 + 1 + 1 = 23
15 + 3 + 5 = 23
There are 297 total permutations. To find unique permutations (we’re going to stop including different orders), we have:
297/3! = 50 permutations.
But wait! That’s not all! Some 23 theorists also use permutations of 32. So let’s test that:
558/3! = 93
so we already have over 140 permutations to choose from. A lot of random numbers we can use to make it seem like the number actually holds some significance.
These number just get bigger. For example, now let’s look at four digits combinations:
23 made out of 4 digits = 2596/4! = 108
32 made out of 4 digits = 6541/4! = 272
So that’s another 350+ permutations to play with. Now, with 1/2 of the single digit numbers, over 140 permutations of 2 numbers, and over 300 permutations of 3 numbers, It’s very easy to make it seem like the number 23 holds some significance.
How about that fact that 2/3 = 0.666? Well, a 2/3rds ratio between numbers is quite common. I guess it’s interesting that it’s the lowest common denominator, but that’s only because they’re both prime.
So to summarrize:
The chance of 23 showing up somewhere is just about as likely as any other number showing up.
Since we use numbers to represent a lot of things, the chances of seeing a permutation of 23 is pretty high.
In the end, numbers are just abstract concepts which we give value to. To say that 23 is a magic number is like saying that 0 degrees Celsius is a magic number because it’s the freezing point of water.
Who knows? Maybe the real magic number is 32, and we’ve had it all around the whole time. My bet’s on some clever operations though.
Note: This also assumes we use a base 10 counting system. Another counting system and none of these “coincidences” would occur. Of course, we would have a completely different set of them.