We've got seven seas, seven brothers, even seven dwarves ... the list goes on and on. In the Bible, there are seven sins. When it comes to ancient myths, stories and traditions, humans have always favoured seven above other numbers. But we often make decisions based on a desire to stand out, from our sense of style to our musical tastes. Bellos first got curious about favorite numbers in response to constantly being asked what his favorite was. Total responses now stand at 44,000. Even numbers — which can always be divided into two groups and are often used for approximations — feel both too common and too vague to inspire an emotional connection. But if we look at the first 10 digits — the numbers we can count on our hands, so the numbers Bellos says we’re most intimate with — seven is the only one that cannot be multiplied or divided within the group. "Six, eight, and 10 can be halved, and nine can be divided by three."  If you're like the rest of the world, you probably long to feel unique. Alex Bellos, the survey’s creator and author of the new book The Grapes of Math, says societies’ fondness for seven is a longstanding one, with deep cultural roots built around a desire to be unique.
– It's important stuff as a child: one's favorite number. And that penchant for a special digit doesn't necessarily fade as adulthood sets in. As Dana Mackenzie writes for Nautilus, it was a question that Guardian math blogger Alex Bellos fielded so frequently that he decided to turn the tables on his readers with favouritenumber.net, a website that asked people to select their favorite, and explain why. The victor, per the 30,025 responses Bellos analyzed: 7. Though 1,123 numbers received nods, almost half of respondents professed to loving a number between one and 10. Indeed, from that range only "one" and "10" failed to qualify for the top 10, replaced by 11 and 13. Speaking to PRI, Bellos says our seven obsession is an ancient one, dating back to Babylon. "You go back to the earliest writers we have, and there are more sevens there than any other number." But Bellos wasn't just interested in the what—he wanted to suss out the why. The most popular reason given for selecting a number was that it was the participant's birthday. But someone born on the 10th was "a lot less likely to choose" that 10 as his favorite than someone born on the 13th, he found. That's because we want an "exceptional" number, Bellos posits. Even numbers feel vague, which could be why he says 110 is the best candidate for least favorite number. He tells Nautilus, "We use round numbers to mean approximate things. When we say 100, we don’t usually mean exactly 100, we mean around 100. So 100 seems incredibly vague. Why would you have something as your favorite that is so vague?"