Nautilus

Found: The World’s Favorite Number

One nice thing about favorite numbers is that there are so many to choose from.Image by Ecelop / Shutterstock

Go ahead, admit it. Like a lot of people, you have a favorite number.

Maybe you’re not as extreme as Sheldon Cooper, the arch-nerd character on television’s Big Bang Theory, who loves the number 73: “73 is the 21st prime number, its mirror 37 is the 12th and its mirror 21 is the product of multiplying, hang on to your hats, 7 and 3!” 

Maybe your favorite number is your birthday, or the jersey you wore in high school. Or maybe it is

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