Ever since stereo volume controls moved from potentiometers to digital buttons, I’ve always set my volume to either an even number, or a multiple of five. While looking at memes on the Internet, I found some posts from other people basically sharing the same preference.
And so I dug deeper into it. And as it turns out, Dan King of the University of Singapore and Chris A Janiszewski of the University of Florida have done the research on this. This article from Wired Magazine, we assign personalities to numbers based on their arithmetical properties, triggering an emotional response.
And so odd numbers are more memorable, hence my preference for summarizing things in three or five items. Even numbers are easier to process because they appear more frequently in multiplication tables.
But why do I like 14, but not 26, nor 34. This piece from The Guardian explains why people like the number seven, and so 14 is fine as a volume setting, but not 7. But 26 only has two other factors besides one and itself, and one of them is 13. Similarly, 34 only has 17 and 2 besides 1 and itself.
But why are multiples of five acceptable? Every other one is odd. Most likely, it’s because we have five fingers on one hand, and it’s easy to accept five, or any of their multiples. But then, how did we get to a clock with 12 numbers, and each number represents five minutes? That’s yet another rabbit hole I’ll have to dig into in another time.
