What is the Funniest Number? An investigation of numerical humor

Abstract

In a preliminary study of numerical humor, we propose the Perceived Specificity Hypothesis (PSH). The PSH states that, for nonnegative integers < 100, the funniness of a number increases with its apparent precision. A survey of 68 individuals supports the veracity of this hypothesis and indicates that oddly specific numbers tend to be funniest. Our results motivate future study in this novel subfield.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: The degree of specificity characterizes the distance between an integer and the nearest multiple of five. Integers with a degree of specificity of 2 (dark blue) are 2 integers away from the nearest multiple of five, those with a degree of specificity of 1 (light blue) are 1 integer away from the nearest multiple of five, and those with a degree of specificity of 0 (gray) are integer multiples of five. The number line is written as the modulus of an integer with respect to 10 for generality.
• Figure 2: Survey results for ranges (from top to bottom) [30, 35], [45, 50], [63, 67], [0, 10], and [77, 87]. Results for the Zero Context portion are shown in blue, and Minimal Context results in orange (scaled to match the number of Zero Context responses when relevant). The left column shows all responses, and the right column shows the results after removing trivial responses.
• Figure 3: Combined survey results for all data (left) and data with trivial responses removed (right). Zero Context results are in blue, and Minimal Context in orange. Responses of 0 are excluded from the solid leftmost bars and included in the unfilled leftmost bars to demonstrate the popularity of 0 compared to the other options that are divisible by 10 (see \ref{['sec:zero']}).
• Figure 4: The fraction of responses according to the selected option's degree of specificity for all responses (left) and not including trivial responses (right). Zero Context data is shown in blue, Minimal Context data in orange.
• Figure 5: The fraction of responses according to the selected option's degree of specificity, which here is negative for odd numbers and positive for even numbers. Results are shown with responses of 0 both included (unfilled bars) and excluded (solid bars).