(urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?

[Jerry Friedman]

From: Jason H <beet31425 at gmail.com>

>If I might briefly offer a mathematician's perspective... :)

...

>I do think 17 has a significance over 13 and 19, but it's more psychological 
>than mathematical: 17 is probably the most "generic"-seeming number under 20. 
>Forget the even numbers. (They're too obvious and well-behaved.) 11 is one more 

>than 10, and 19 is one less than 20; these are both "boundary" numbers. We have 

>13, 15 and 17 left. 13 is fraught with superstitious significance, of course, 
>and 15 is a multiple of 5. That really leaves 17, the most "random" or "generic" 
>
>number under 20. Does this sound like numerology? Yes, but I think it's really 
>psychology.

If you want to get a laugh with that, I think you have to tell it the way my 
professor did, ending with "19 is too close to 20".  (Probably nobody laughed 
when I posted it here, but we did when he told it in class.)  As psychology, 
though, it's more interesting than I realized.

>Similarly, if you ask someone to pick a number from 1 to 10, they often pick 7.
>
>
>The following blog entry is relevant and interesting:
>http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/is_17_the_most_random_number.php

And makes it more likely that Wolfe could have picked 17 "at random" more than 
once.  Thanks for linking to that.

Jerry Friedman