37 is a Psychologically Random Number
About eight years ago, I started noticing the number 37 appearing disproportionately in television and movies. It soon became a "cult" number for my girlfriend and myself—we'd ring up each other any time we saw a "37" somewhere (that was my excuse, anyway).
We soon came to distinguish three types of instances of 37:
- coincidental (e.g. someone was born in 1937, or something was 37 miles away)
- mathematical (e.g. 37!+1 is prime)
- psychological (e.g. choosing 37 for an arbitrary but specific number)
The third, we referred to as "true 37s". It really is remarkable how many times 37 is the number people will come up with when they are randomly picking a number but want to sound specific (as in "I can think of 37 things wrong with this proposal").
I recently found:
which lists many instances of 37 (of which only some are "true 37s").
And my sister then found the following:
On that last link, make sure you follow the link on psychologically random numbers. It's where I picked up the term for this phenomenon that has fascinated me for almost a decade.
Last Modified: Feb. 8, 2005
Author: James Tauber