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The Top 10 Numbers of 2011

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 1, 2012 at 7:46 am

Re-posted from National Lampoon

Rank          Number      Previous Rank

#1                              1                                   1

#2                              4                                  4

#3                              2                                  2

#4                              5                                  5

#5                               3                                  3

#6                               9                                  9

#7                               8                                  8

#8                               7                                  7

#9                               6                                  6

#10                             10                              10

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16 Responses to The Top 10 Numbers of 2011

  1. catman306 says:
    January 1, 2012 at 9:24 am

    Please note that none of the numbers have changed their rankings from other years.

    The addition of more significant figures in future studies promise to point out any trends.

    • MA Rodger says:
      January 2, 2012 at 8:27 am

      Catman 306
      You are trying to dismiss these findings as though nothing has changed. Do you intentionally not see the difference between “rank” and “ranking”?
      Everything has changed. The 2010 ranking list was 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. Now it is 1,4,2,3,9,8,7,6,10!

      • Dennis Tomlinson says:
        January 2, 2012 at 9:32 am

        Yes, and the “Previous Rank” column is a misnomer. It is actually, row-by-row, the identity function of the “Number” column:
        f(N) = N
        Stated very degeneratly, the “Previous Rank” of “Number” ‘N’ is the same as number ‘N’s “Previous Rank” – whatever THAT might have been. Which leads to the question of why the number 22 is not on the list. It must be a hoax – Hoax-22, perhaps.

  2. Joan Savage says:
    January 1, 2012 at 9:57 am

    If it were a real analysis of the numbers most frequently used by newscasters and politicians, “number one” and “number two spot” seem to get decent coverage in sports and politics, much more so than fourth-ranked anything. After 1 and 2 there seems to be a fair amount about 10s (as in, ten favorites, ten factors, ten times as much). But then, I wasn’t keeping tabs.

    Ironic than in comparison, Asian countries have a tradition of associating numbers with other characteristics, so there really are numbers more popular than others.

    Here’s an anti-favorite: the yottajoule, 10^24 joules. It’s the energy that allegedly would heat all the earth’s water by 1 C, according to wikipedia.

  3. fj says:
    January 1, 2012 at 11:59 am

    How Great Was 2012! By Bruce Handy
    (“I’m a person from the future!”)

    “Even the weather in 2012 was memorably awesome! Sweden enjoyed its last hurricane-free summer!

    “What? I didn’t say anything about the giant undead flesh-eating mayor-for-life Bloomberg? He’s not so bad, once you get used to him!

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/how-great-was-2012.html

    “

  4. Jocelyn Plourde says:
    January 1, 2012 at 12:09 pm

    I’d like to put in a vote for the mole:

    6,022 x 10^23.

    The mass of one atom of any element is the same as the mass of one mole of atoms of that element, but in different unit (u vs g).

    It’s not a yottajoule, but it’s still pretty cool!

  5. Leif says:
    January 1, 2012 at 5:25 pm

    How many Hiroshima bombs does it take to get 10^23 joules? Being that we are currently have a forcing imbalance of ~1,000,000 Hiroshima Bombs each day, when can we expect the waters of the world to be 1C warmer?

  6. Rabid Doomsayer says:
    January 1, 2012 at 5:36 pm

    Typical Western imperialists, totally ignore the contribution of the Arabic zero.

    • Church of CeeCee says:
      January 2, 2012 at 8:54 am

      I do not believe that we have ignored the arabic number zero. Have you not looked around the room?

  7. Merrelyn Emery says:
    January 1, 2012 at 6:53 pm

    Those number theorists are just in it for the grant money. My research shows clearly that the top number is 3 because it is such a beautiful shade of red, closely followed by 7 which is bright green, ME

  8. MA Rodger says:
    January 2, 2012 at 5:09 am

    The contrarian propaganda in this pseudoscientific survey is very obvious when it is subject to scientific testing.
    The results strongly favour the odd numbers as well as the non-prime numbers. What does that tell us about the undisclosed survey methods.
    Worst treated of all in this survey of cherry-picked numbers is the number 6, the only perfect number present. Questions do need to be asked about the funding of this work.

  9. _Flin_ says:
    January 2, 2012 at 1:45 pm

    This can’t be true.

    The 6 is easily the most boring of the top 10.

    - it’s not a prime number.
    - it can be divided by 2 and 3
    - it’s square root is something fishy
    - as is it’s cube root
    - it is ugly and non-symmetric in binary code

    while the 10 is
    - the root of our number system
    - the binary number for 2
    - 1 + 2 + 3 + 4

    This study was probably not peer reviewed and is highly partisan and from a journal without any scientific credibility. Probably paid for and influenced by fact-free republiberals.

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