What's Your Favorite Number?

Alex Bellos is fascinated with numbers.  As an author of books on numbers, he's been asked countless times what his favorite number is.  He decided to conduct a survey to find out what numbers people most liked.  He promises to publish the results of this worldwide survey in 2012.


Students can also take part in the survey which simply asks you to input your favorite number and explain why it is your favorite.  It would be fun for students to take part in this easy survey and they'd surely be interested in the results when they are available.  Visit the Alex Bellos Blog to read about the survey idea and to enter your favorite number.


Extension:   Extend this online activity by conducting a classroom survey of favorite numbers.  You might use the same format that Bellos uses online.  Students would collect data, then organize the data presenting it in graphical form before analyzing the results.  Students might elect to organize a schoolwide survey to see if the classroom results match this larger sample.