The number 7...

I picked number 7 today for many reasons. The obvious one is that this is my 8th post and thus I have completed 7 posts till date! This is more than the total number of journal entries I have written in my entire life. I now realize my mistake. I tried to make the journal entries about me rather than about things that interest me...no wonder i never crossed 7!! One little known reason is that i associate 7 very emotionally with my son. I found out that i was expecting him on 10/06/2007 at 6:10 AM. If you sum up all the numbers from that date, you will get 7 and same thing for the time at which i learned about his existence!! This is probably a little sappy, but one of the very few things I am sappy about, indeed!! If you are anything like me and live your life by measuring numbers consciously or sub-consciously, you will realize that the fact that i remember the date and the time has less to do with the emotional importance of that moment and more to do with placing that information in a neat little packet in my brain's memory!!

The number 7 in my spectrum is represented by a "clear" color or "no color". I have had a few friends ask me how a "clear" band would work, and why. While I have found it difficult to explain, perhaps this figure representing 7 as a part of a flower vase will indicate why I always associate 7 with clear or negative space:

The Number 7 in a Flower Vase

As you can see in this figure, the black lines represent a 7!! The number 7 is many things...it is a prime number and if you google "the number 7" you will find out how many different mathematical functions involve 7 as a key number in their sequences! But let's just explore things that we use/hear/know on a regular basis:

1. 7 is the total of the two opposite sides of a regular dice! (1 and 6; 2 and 5; 3 and 4)

2. 7 is also the most probable sum if two dice are thrown together (6 out of 36 = 1/6) - so i guess you know what to bet on now when you are playing with two dice!! LOL

3. 7 is the number of deadly sins as described in some major monotheistic formalized religions - Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, Sloth. Majority of the world religions have an unusually high occurrence of 7 in the theological books. I believe 7 is considered a magical number by many cultures and religions, but that is beyond my interest at this time!

4. 7 days of the week named after the 7 earliest acknowledged extra-terrestrial bodies - Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn! 7 months in the year have 31 days and the rest have either 30 or 28(29 in leap year) - January, March, May, July, August, October, December. 

5. A rainbow has 7 colors - VIBGYOR (violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red); Music has 7 major notes - Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti (Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni - in Indian classical)

6. The Big Dipper, also known as Saptarshi, is an easy to recognize stellar constellation that is formed out of 7 stars! Another major 7-star constellation is Orion.

7. We all are very familiar with 7 basic terms used to give directions - left, right, up, down, behind, front, beside! I am deliberately NOT focusing on the "Seven Wonders of the World" because I believe that 7 is too small a number to try to express the wonders in the world!!

Mathematically, 7 is interesting. The rule for identifying divisibility by 7 is almost more complex than actually manually doing the division. But i will attempt to explain, nonetheless. It is a three step  (O how i love thee, number 3!!) procedure:

1) Take the last digit of the number and double it

2) Subtract this doubled value from the rest of the digits

3) If the result is two digits, check if the two digit number is divisible by 7, otherwise repeat procedure.

e.g. Let's consider a number 595. Last digit is '5' so doubling it gives us '10'. Subtract 10 from '59' which gives us '49'. '49' is the square of 7 and therefore perfectly divisible by 7. This implies that '595' should be perfectly divisible by 7 (no fractional/decimal solutions!!). Testing --> 595/7 = 85!!

Well, my students are almost done with their midterm so i will get going...

Till tomorrow, or later...ADIOS!!