Stats/Math Philosophy: You jokingly answer 288 to math Q's on here, 50% right

Here's an interesting thing about statistics and recurring frequencies of numbers.

Way back when we had an internet-breaking math equation that left the computer (be it human or calculator) with an answer of 2 or 288.

This became so popular that is was covered by journalists, bloggers, and loads of internet math forums and youtube channels.

The internet was inundated with searches for the number 2 and the number 288.

OK. So let's think of other numbers that are populating webspace.

We obviously have numbers from 0-9 because they make up all the digits of our numbers.

Then we have important dates and years: 2000, 1969, 2016, 1776.

Then we have pop culture numbers in song, band, movies, books, etc. 1984, 1812, 4.

And then we have EVERY CALCULATION completed by the google calculator or answer reported on a webpage.

If we have this huge dataset of every problem that has ever been run and every number that is referenced we can look at it as a sampling of all answers to all the math problems that exist. Of course there are limitations, like a webpage, due to lack of storage space, cannot hold a number with infinite digits. Likewise, google's search bar is limited by character spaces. However, it should give us a range in which our answer will fall into because the list is so exhaustive.

OK. So, think back to the number references. The most popular ones would either be because they make up a number (single digit) or they are popular from a cultural standpoint (band, year, day), OR they are a frequently occurring SOLUTION to a problem! And who is to say that you can separate these?



All of this to say: If you jokingly put 288 as a response to a question posted on this forum, you have a good chance (better than a wild guess) of being right!

That is because 288 was thrown around so much and populated that number group of all real answers that it appears at a higher frequency than other numbers!



So have fun! Put down 288 you might be right! And the more you put it down as a joke the more right you may become, because you are adding more references to that number!


**I used tremendous hyperbole listing 50% in the title to get you to read the post. I apologize.