Why is this number everywhere?

Veritasium · 12.1M views · 2024-03-28 · 23:51

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Overview

Veritasium explores why the number 37 turns up so often, drawing on Tom Magliery's collection of 37 sightings and a poll of about 200,000 people asked to pick a random number. It covers how humans choose numbers and why 37 stands out.

On Hacker News

HN cites it in LLM randomness and number-picking threads as evidence that humans are also biased and predictable when asked for random numbers.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2024–2026

Topics

Probability & game theory Psychology & human behavior Recreational & visual math

What people said

golergka · 2024-03 · Strong recommendation
Probably posted because of this video: [VIDEO] Which not only links to this website, but also explains the topic in detail. Can highly recommend the channel anyway — especially for the HN crowd.
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mitch_f · 2025-08 · Recommendation
Derek Muller did a good overview of this concept on his Veritasium channel: [VIDEO] . Even more interesting for HN is a link in the description to one of the speaker's (Tom Magliery) websites: [LINK] .
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indit · 2026-05 · Reference
I'm still amazed that 37, 73, and other numbers ending in 7 are the most popular "random" choices for both AI and human. Check this Veritasium video for human choice: [Why is this number everywhere?]( [VIDEO] )
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Sources

Video by Veritasium, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

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