Exploring the phenomenon of people's inclination towards the number 37 and its significance in decision-making and randomness.

The Mystery of 37

Discussing the psychological pattern of people selecting blue and 7 as their choices, and how it relates to the preference for the number 37.

The Blue 7 Phenomenon

Embarking on a comprehensive investigation into the number 37 and its prevalence in various aspects of life.

Investigating the Number 37

Exploring the widespread professional magic trick that relies on getting an audience member to select the number 37.

The 37 Force

Conducting the largest random number survey ever and analyzing the consistent patterns in people's selection of supposedly random numbers.

The Random Number Survey

Examining the human perception of randomness and the inclination towards specific numbers, particularly odd and prime numbers like 37.

Perception of Randomness

Delving into the mathematical and practical significance of the number 37 in decision-making and its application in various scenarios.

The Significance of 37

Explaining the optimal strategy for decision-making using the 37% rule and its relevance in practical scenarios.

The 37% Rule

Showcasing the extensive collection of instances and occurrences of the number 37 in everyday life, emphasizing its ubiquitous presence.

The 37 Collection

Highlighting the power of intuition and the unseen patterns in the human mind, using the number 37 as an example.

Unseen Patterns and Intuition

# The Fascination with the Number 37

## Uncovering the Mystery

Let me show you something unbelievable. Name a random number between 1 and 100. 61. Okay, that's pretty random. Let's name a random number from 1 to 100, random. 43. 43, thank you so much. 56. 7. I want the most random number between 1 and 100, like totally random. 11. 37. 79. 79? Thank you so much. 91. 7. 3. 37. Really? 59. Merci. 13. 7. 37. 37. 73. 37. 35. 37. 37. No way! 43. 2. 37. I knew you were going to do it! You just 37'd and walked away between 1 and 100 Okay, 37. Oh perfect. Thank you so much 83 37 37 87 55 37 37. Oh, Can I shake your hand? I love the thought you're putting into this. 37? No, you are kidding me! Are you real? Did we ask you this already? Random number between 1 to 100. 37. 37! Oh my gosh, yes! Name a random number between 1 and 100. 37. Are you kidding me?! Why?! It's a good number, I guess. Any number. Where did that come from? Imagination, I suppose.

## The Research

Well, people are actually really bad at selecting things randomly. In fact, when asked to pick a color and a number, people reliably select blue and 7 the most across dozens of different cultures. Psychologists have a name for this pattern, the blue 7 phenomenon. And when picking a random number between 1 and a hundred, it has long been suggested that the equivalent of the blue 7 phenomenon is the number 37. My producer Emily and I spoke to hundreds of people to test this theory. The most common answer was 7 but maybe that's because people just expected that we'd ask them for numbers between 1 and 10. The most common two-digit number really was 37, much to our surprise. So we decided to embark on the biggest investigation ever on the number 37. And it took us to some unexpected places.

## The Significance of 37

### The Prime Number

- 37 is a prime number, and it has a strong presence in various aspects of life.
- It is an irregular prime, a cuban prime, a lucky prime, a sexy prime, a permutable prime, and a padavan prime.

### The Secretary Problem

- The 37% rule also works for time. Spend the first 3.7 years seeing what's out there, and then select the next person who's better than anyone you've seen.

## The 37 Phenomenon

- The number 37 seems to have a significant impact on decision-making and random selection.
- It's humanity's go-to random number and one of our most prominent prime numbers.

## The Collection

- This collection of images, everything you're seeing on screen, has been collected by 1 man over the course of his life.
- The number 37 seems to appear everywhere, from lottery tickets to locker numbers.

## Conclusion

The fascination with the number 37 is undeniable. It holds a special place in our minds and seems to influence our decision-making process more than we realize. Whether it's the go-to random number or a significant prime number, 37 continues to intrigue and captivate us.

To further enhance your problem-solving skills and intuition, check out Brilliant for interactive lessons in math, data science, programming, and technology.

Thank you for joining us on this journey of uncovering the mystery of the number 37.

Unveiling the Mysteries of the Number 37: A Fascinating Journey

- People are bad at selecting random numbers, with 37 being the most commonly chosen when asked to pick a number between 1 and 100
- A survey with 200,000 responses confirmed that 37 and 73 were the most commonly chosen "random" numbers
- Primes, particularly 37, feel the most random to people because they are not as common and do not have a formula for their occurrence
- 37 is the median second prime factor of all numbers, making it stand out as a "random" number

- The median second prime factor of all numbers is 37
- 37 has many unique qualities as a prime number
- The number 37 is important in decision-making and has practical applications in life
- The 37% rule can be used to maximize chances of success in decision-making
- The number 37 appears frequently in everyday life and is collected by individuals
- The fascination with the number 37 has been ongoing for decades and has led to the creation of a website for collecting instances of the number

- The speaker has a group of people from around the world who collect instances of the number 37
- They have been doing this for 18 years and plan to continue
- The number 37 holds significance and is seen as a universal special number
- The speaker wants to turn their collection into individual facts on a website
- They are open to receiving instances of the number 37 from others
- The video is sponsored by Brilliant, an online platform for learning and problem-solving skills.

- 37 is the most commonly chosen "random" number between 1 and 100
- Primes, especially 37, feel the most random to people
- 37 is the median second prime factor of all numbers
- The number 37 has practical applications in decision-making and appears frequently in everyday life
- There is a group of people who have been collecting instances of the number 37 for 18 years and plan to continue
- The video is sponsored by Brilliant, an online platform for learning and problem-solving skills.

The number 37 is on your mind more than you think. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-day trial and get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

Huge thanks to Tom Magliery for sharing his 37 collection with us. Support http://thirty-seven.org by sharing your own 37 sightings to tom@thirty-seven.org!
Thanks to Dr. Todd Landman, the Academic Magician, for sharing his footage of the 37 Force. - https://www.todd-landman.com/ 

▀▀▀
Special thanks to our Patreon supporters! Join the community to help us keep our videos free, forever: https://ve42.co/PatreonDE

Sam Lutfi, Lee Redden, Juan Benet, Richard Sundvall, Paul Peijzel, Gnare, Michael Krugman, Meekay, Ubiquity Ventures, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Bill Linder, Evgeny Skvortsov, Burt Humburg, Dave Kircher, Diffbot, john kiehl, Blake Byers, Stephen Wilcox, John H. Austin, Jr., Josh Hibschman, TTST, Orlando Bassotto, Anton Ragin, David Johnston, KeyWestr, Tj Steyn, meg noah, Chris Harper, Adam Foreman, Max Paladino, Balkrishna Heroor, I. H., Garrett Mueller, Bertrand Serlet, Kyi, wolfee, Matthias Wrobel

If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically - https://ve42.co/SnatomsV

▀▀▀
References:
Simon, W. E. (1972). “Blue Seven Phenomenon” in Elementary and Jr. High Children. Psychological Reports - https://ve42.co/Simon1972
Trueman, J. (1979). Existence & Robustness of Blue Seven Phenomena. The Journal of General Psychology - https://ve42.co/Trueman1979
Saito, M. (1999). “Blue and Seven Phenomena” in Japanese Students. Perceptual & Motor Skills - https://ve42.co/Saito1999
Philbrick, J. L. (1976). Blue seven in East Africa: Preliminary report. Perceptual & Motor Skills - https://ve42.co/Philbrick1976
Hargreaves, S. (2009). The psychology of randomness. - https://ve42.co/Hargreaves2009 
The 37 Force via The Magician’s Forum - https://ve42.co/37Force1
Fulves, K. (1979) Self-Working Mental Magic. Dover Publications, Inc. - https://ve42.co/Fulves1979 
Random numbers via The Jargon File at catb.org - https://ve42.co/Jargon
Random Number Survey by MahoganyForest via Reddit - https://ve42.co/RedditRndm
Prime number theorem via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/WikiPNT
Grossack, C. (2023). A truly incredible fact about the number 37. Grossack.site - https://ve42.co/Grossack2023
Least prime factor of n via oeis.org - https://ve42.co/LeastPrime
Fry, H. (2017). When should you settle down? ideas.ted.com - https://ve42.co/Fry2017
Choosing Toilets by Numberphile - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIOoCKO-ybQ
Seaton, R. (2014). The Secretary Problem Explained: Dating Mathematically. rs.io - https://ve42.co/Seaton2014

Images & Video:
Just 37 by Tom Magliery - https://ve42.co/Just37
R4000 Processor via Molecular Expressions - https://ve42.co/micro37
The “37” Cluster by Noel Carboni - https://ve42.co/NGC2169
Charles Fleischer via Wikimedia - https://ve42.co/Fleischer

▀▀▀
Directed by Emily Zhang
Written by Emily Zhang and Derek Muller
Edited by Peter Nelson
Asst edited by Luke Molloy
Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Ivy Tello, and Leigh Williamson
Illustrated by Jakub Misiek
Filmed by Emily Zhang, Casper Mebius, Derek Muller, Michael Cimpher, and David Szasz
Additional research by Gregor Čavlović
Produced by Emily Zhang, Giovanna Utichi, Han Evans, and Emily Taylor

Thumbnail contributions by Ignat Berbeci, Ren Hurley, and Peter Sheppard
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Storyblocks
Music from Epidemic Sound

Let's name a random number from 1 to 100, random.

I want the most random number between 1 and 100, like totally random.

I don't know, it's the first number that came from 1.

I love the thought you're putting into this.

Well, people are actually really bad at selecting things randomly.

In fact, when asked to pick a color and a number, people reliably select blue and 7 the most across dozens of different cultures.

Psychologists have a name for this pattern, the blue 7 phenomenon.

And when picking a random number between 1 and a hundred, it has long been suggested that the equivalent of the blue 7 phenomenon is the number 37.

My producer Emily and I spoke to hundreds of people to test this theory.

The most common answer was 7 but maybe that's because people just expected that we'd ask them for numbers between 1 and 10.

The most common two-digit number really was 37, much to our surprise.

So we decided to embark on the biggest investigation ever on the number 37.

And it took us to some unexpected places.

It's just really interesting because it turns up so much.

How many objects are there here in the room with us that have a 37 on them?

Apparently, people choose 37 so reliably that there's even a widespread professional magic trick that relies entirely on getting an audience member to just pick 37 out of thin air.

I'm going to ask you to think of a number in a moment, okay?

You could have 19, 17, or 15, but not 11, because you see both numbers are the same, 1 and 1 next to 1 another.

In the famous Stanford-MIT jargon file, the origin of hacker slang, 37 is given as the random number of choice for computer programmers.

When groups of people are polled to pick a random number between 1 and 100, the most commonly chosen number is 37.

The thing is, no formal polls on this actually exist.

The best we found was a Reddit poll of 1380 people from 4 years ago.

But after that, the winning number was 37.

But we can do better than a sample size of just a thousand people.

So we conducted the largest random number survey ever.

In a community post 3 weeks ago, we asked people to pick a random number between 1 and a hundred.

It's fascinating to watch how consistent these supposedly random numbers are.

From 10,000 to 100,000, all the way up to 200,000 respondents.

The distribution barely changes, suggesting that people from all around the world think about random numbers in a particular way, and it is decidedly not random.

Ignoring the extremes of the scale, because people were primed by the numbers 1 and 100 in the question itself, and ignoring 42 and 69 because they're not random, there are a few numbers that stand out, which we seem to regard as more random than the rest.

Then we asked people to pick the number they thought the fewest others would pick.

The goal was to get rid of favorite or lucky numbers and give truly random selections.

Again, ignoring the very extremes and 50 in the middle, the most selected numbers were far and away 73 and 37, which were nearly tied.

The actual least picked number in the first question was 90, followed by 30, 40, 70, 80, and 60.

Multiples of 10 apparently don't seem that random.

The most picked overall numbers, ignoring the outliers, were 73 and 37.

Ironically, all this evidence points to 37 and its inversion, 73, as not being random at all.

Well, 1 argument is that this is just how people perceive randomness.

No, it would be too Yeah, yeah, it's too central I think people think that even numbers are less random than odd numbers.

5 feels not random 9 and 1 feel too extreme.

This is backed up by the fact that every 1 of the top numbers in our survey consisted of threes and sevens.

In fact, 3 and 7 were the most selected digits on both questions.

But there's also a mathematical case for humanity's number of choice.

Because it's not just odd numbers, but specifically primes which feel like the most random numbers.

Notice how we ignore odds ending in fives, or how something like 39 still feels a little less random than 37.

Primes feel random for at least 2 reasons.

First, they don't appear as much in our lives.

Pixel counts, fruit boxes, square footage.

We live in a composite world with multiple dimensions that multiply together.

So we just don't see primes much past the single digits.

Second, we don't have a formula for primes.

If you have a prime number and you want to find the next 1 you have no choice but to check every number until you find a prime.

The closest thing we have to a formula is the prime number theorem which gives the approximation that the nth prime number occurs around n times natural log of n.

For example the thousandth prime number should be around 6908.

But of all the primes, 37 has reason to stand out.

If we were to find the prime factors of every number, we would see that 2 is the smallest prime factor for exactly half of them, all of the even numbers, and 3 is the smallest prime factor for a sixth of all numbers, anything that's divisible by 3, but not by 2.

As we pick larger and larger primes, they form the smallest prime factor for fewer and fewer integers.

But What if we track the second smallest prime factor of each number?

Well, first we have 3, which is the second prime factor of a number, only when the number is divisible by both 2 and 3, or divisible by 6.

So 1 sixth of all numbers have a second prime factor of 3.

And as we keep going, which number will end up at the balancing point?

This is the median second prime factor of all numbers, all numbers from 1 all the way up to a Google and off to infinity.

Would you believe that that number is 37?

5 is the second prime factor only when a number is divisible by 5 and 3, but not 2.

In the first case, a number divisible by 5 and 3 means it's divisible by 15, so that's 1 15th of all numbers.

But it also can't be divisible by 2, so half of 1 15th is a 30th of all numbers.

In the second case, a number divisible by 5 and 2 means it's divisible by 10, but it cannot be divisible by 3, so we're left with 1 tenth times 2 thirds equals 1 fifteenth of all numbers.

Adding up these 2 cases, we get that 1 tenth of all numbers have 5 as their second prime factor.

And we can repeat this for the next prime, 7.

Just take each of these cases and add them up to get that 1 15th of all integers have a second prime factor of 7.

Keeping a running total, we quickly approach a balancing point for the second prime factor across all integers.

So the median second prime factor of all numbers is 37.

Half of numbers have a second prime factor of 37 or less.

There are other remarkable qualities about 37 as a prime.

It's an irregular prime, a cuban prime, a lucky prime, a sexy prime, a permutable prime, a padavan prime, and at this point mathematicians might just be making up types of primes.

37's identity as a prime number is so strong that the same day I first learned the number 37, I learned it was prime.

This was 1 of my first books as a toddler.

It teaches you every number from 1 to 100 with a short story or fun fact for each.

So for 26, that's how many letters in the alphabet, or for 30, they give the days of September, or for 52, that's how many cards are in a deck.

I understood every other number, so I also wanted to understand 37.

So that number has nagged me ever since, and now this video is being made some 20 years later.

If you take a number that is a multiple of 37 already, like 1369, that's 37 squared, and then you reverse it, and then you stick a 0 in between every digit, then that number is a multiple of 37.

And I literally spent the next month on the bus trying to prove that fact, which I finally did.

Is this your party trick that you can bring out?

Surprisingly, it doesn't impress as many people as you would think.

But there's also a practical reason 37 is an important number for humanity.

Say you're faced with a choice that is both immediate and final, like whether to rent the apartment you've just toured or whether to accept a job offer you received, Or it can be as small as whether to stop at the next gas station on a road trip.

These are all problems where you can't assess all the options at once and then decide.

With each option you encounter, you need to decide whether to accept it or reject it forever and see what comes next.

In these scenarios, it feels impossible to make the best choice.

If you select too early, you'll probably never even see the best option.

But if you select too late, well then you've probably rejected the best option already.

So your best bet is somewhere in the middle.

There you know at least some information from the options you've seen, and you have some choice to select or pass.

But how do you know exactly when to decide?

First, you need to see some options and reject them automatically, just to learn what's out there.

And then at a certain stopping point S, you need to stop rejecting them and start evaluating whether an option is the best you've seen so far.

We need to work out which stopping point maximizes our chances of picking the best option.

For each spot, find the probability that the best option is located there times the probability we get there from stopping point S.

Then add these probabilities up across every spot.

Now the chance of the best option being in any spot is just random.

If there are n options in total it's 1 over n.

But it's a little harder to find the chances of getting to each spot.

Say the best option is in the next spot after s, s plus 1.

Well, since this is the next spot over from the stopping point, we have a 100% chance of getting there, so we're guaranteed to visit it and select it.

But if the true best option is in spot S plus 2, well there's a small chance we'll miss it.

If the best of all the previous options is sitting in spot S plus 1, we would just pick that and stop looking before reaching S plus 2.

There's a 1 in S plus 1 chance of this happening.

So the chances we do get to spot s plus 2 to pick the true best option is 1 minus that, or s over s plus 1.

This same calculation continues up until the last spot n.

We only get here if we've been passing on every option so far, which means that 1 of the first S options must have been the best of the total n-1 options we've seen.

In total, this gives us the expression 1 over n times 1 plus S over S plus 1 plus S over S plus 2 and so on all the way up to s over n minus 1.

Factoring out the s, the sum inside the parentheses approximates the function 1 over x, going from s to n.

Taking that integral, we get the natural log of n over s.

So the probability we select the best option is s over n times the natural log of n over s.

To maximize this probability, we can find the peak of this function by setting its derivative to 0.

And this gives the natural log of S over N equals negative 1.

So S over N equals 1 over E, or about 37%.

So explore and reject 37% of options just to get a sense of what's out there.

And then pick the first option to come along that's better than all of the ones you've seen so far.

And your chances of success using this method are also 37%.

This math question is known as the secretary problem or the marriage problem, as it also applies to hiring the best employees or even deciding on the best life partner.

Now it can be impractical to check 37% of the options because you don't always know how many candidates are out there.

So if you want to get married, say, in 10 years, then spend the first 3.7 years seeing what's out there, and then select the next person who's better than anyone you've seen.

So 37 is actually important to our lives, and people seem to subconsciously recognize this.

We gravitate towards the number everywhere.

This collection of images, everything you're seeing on screen, has been collected by 1 man over the course of his life.

This is probably on the order of 4 digits, I'd say.

There's Probably not 10,000, but I'm sure there's more than 1,000 here.

It's just some political cartoon about sports, but there's no reason that guy had to have jersey number 37.

A nail that I found somewhere that has 37 on the head, I don't even know what that means.

1 time my mom gave me $37 for my birthday.

Was your 37th birthday like the greatest birthday ever?

I had a big party and I invited everybody I knew.

So I had 2 different friends who both gave me 37 lottery tickets.

This is an article from when they found the 37th Mersenne Prime.

How many hundreds of these do you want me to go through?

I must have gotten that in Germany, but I don't know, but I don't remember what it was.

Stolen from the highway when I was on a road trip.

I heard you say you've never stolen anything.

There was a bookstore on campus when I was an undergrad at KU, and there were 37 steps in that staircase.

feel like everyone gets 37 this much in their lives, or do you feel like you're just attracting it?

You know, the reason I started was because it seemed like it turned up a lot.

There was a comedy routine by Charles Fleischer.

He went through this sort of litany of coincidences about the number 37, like there are 37 holes in the speaker part of a telephone.

There's 37 movements in Beethoven's 9 symphonies.

There are all these amazing coincidences that he rattled off.

I was amazed and I've been collecting them ever since.

Since like 1981, yeah, so 43, 43 years probably.

I built the 37 website for the first time in 1994.

I don't know how the website got out there, but somehow it got out there.

I've got maybe a half a dozen people from around the world who every week or month will post their latest batch of 37s that they've seen out and about.

And they've been doing this for how long?

Do you have anything to say to anyone who might be like, 37, that's just a base 10 representation of that number.

I am also interested in the number 37 in all of its various other forms.

Roman numerals, binary numbers, 100101 by the way, numbers in any other base, yeah, 25 in hexadecimal, 45 in octal.

Do you think you're gonna keep looking for a 37 and collecting 37 for your whole life?

See all Veritasium transcripts on Youtube

Why is this number everywhere?