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But what makes the number lucky?
Adrian Rice, an associate professor of mathematics at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., who specializes in mathematics history, said there are countless theories but not one cracks the code.
“(The theories) are legends passed down from generation to generation and because people want something to talk about.”
Any luck associated with the digit is purely cultural, not mathematical, he said. And not everyone considers it lucky.
“In Western culture seven is perceived as lucky, but in China seven is vaguely considered spooky,” Rice said.
Seven appears often in Jewish and Christian scriptures. And Western culture is also based on ancient Roman and Greek civilizations, Rice said. When early astronomers identified the seven “planets” visible to the naked eye — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the sun and moon—people believe it to be tied with religion, Rice said.
“They associated the sky with heaven, so (they thought) seven must be a heavenly number,” he said.
Pythagoreans, an ancient Greek sect in southern Italy, believed God created the world using numbers. Seven was special because it represented the union of a man and woman; he associated the number three with men and four with women, Rice said.
“Trivially, the first square number is four and first triangular number is three. The combinations of three and four are regarded as quite good numbers because they have good ingredients,” he said. “It may or may not be a coincidental that they add up to seven.”
But, Rice said, any number could be considered lucky.
In China, three is considered lucky because it sounds like “alive” and four is considered unlucky because it’s sounds like “death.”
“Everything depends on where you were brought up and what stories you heard,” Rice said. “People like associating different things with numbers.”
Reporter Amber Dulek can be reached at (507) 453-3513 or amber.dulek@lee.net.
god? wrote on Jul 9, 2007 4:44 PM: