WEBVTT - Odds and Evens, Part 3 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:14.360 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.200 My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.959 and we are back for the third and final part 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:23.639 in our series on the psychology and cultural significance of 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:28.680 number parity pr it y paroity referring to whether a 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.880 number is even or odd, and we are ending it 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.960 with an odd number of episodes that just felt right now. 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:37.760 If you haven't heard the other parts in this series, 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:39.600 you might want to go back and listen to those first. 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.400 But in part one we talked about the mathematical principle 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:46.400 of number parity, as well as some evidence that people, 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:52.200 if given the opportunity, will sometimes project associations and emotions 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:56.720 onto even and odd numbers, for example by maybe feeling 0:00:56.760 --> 0:01:00.720 more positivity towards even numbers on average, or by having 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:04.440 an esthetic preference for odd numbers in visual art, as 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.960 reflected in the conventional rule of thirds and rule of 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.240 odds in art theory, which we discussed in some detail 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:13.520 in that episode. But then we also brought in some 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.640 questions and counter evidence about the real world validity and 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:21.800 alleged universality of these preferences for odds in art. In 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:24.440 part two of the series, we talked about a research 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.600 paper on the cognitive psychology of number parity, which advanced 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.560 what I thought was a really interesting argument that despite 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:35.920 the fact that all positive integers are mathematically defined as 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:40.080 simply odd or even and nothing in between, our brains 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.800 may in practice treat some numbers as more even or 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:49.760 more odd than others, mentally transforming these definitionally discrete categories 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.000 into a semi smooth gradient. And this could be due 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:57.360 to multiple factors, involving mathematical properties like the ease of divisibility, 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:02.280 and also linguistic properties how easily we process different words 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.680 and their associated concepts. We also talk some more about 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:09.399 even and odd groupings in visual art, specifically in religious 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.280 images such as that of the ten headed demon king 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:16.720 Ravna in Hindu mythology, and we also talked about preferences 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.840 for even or odd groupings on food plates. I think 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:23.360 the conventional wisdom favors odd numbers of food items, but 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:26.480 the research maybe paints a slightly more complicated picture. 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.040 Yeah, I think in either case, like what does a 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:34.840 plate of food and the multi headed incarnation of a 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:37.720 Hindu God, what do they have in common? It's that 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:41.920 there are other things involved in and how you're ultimately 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.720 going to perceive this image. Either religious iconography is going 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.880 to be trying to relate other concepts to you the viewer, 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.160 the intended audience viewer, and the food imagery is of 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.280 course showing you something that on some level at least 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:56.320 you want to eat. 0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:00.560 Yeah, exactly. So we're here today to finish off this 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:04.000 series with a few more things about odd and even topics. 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:06.919 So I just wanted to mention at the top of 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:09.520 the episode here a few more interesting ideas I came 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.840 across while reading about evens and odds. Previously, we talked 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:18.240 about some evidence that, at least in certain contexts, people 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:22.639 like some numbers more than others. For example, they may 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:27.160 have more positive emotional feelings about even numbers, or at 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.079 least about numbers that are easily divisible, because one of 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:34.360 the studies we talked about in part one apparently found 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.720 that people had more positive feelings toward even numbers and 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.960 numbers divisible by five. Coming back to the question of 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.600 certain numbers feeling more even or less odd than they 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.920 really are. So a great example is that twenty five 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:51.760 is an odd number, but why does it feel like 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.520 an even number to me? I would say the ease 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.080 of divisibility by the sub base of five is a 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.840 pretty good guess. And this sort of brings me back 0:03:59.840 --> 0:04:03.400 to idea I first encountered in a couple of the 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:05.800 articles that we were talking about in part one by 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:10.400 a British author named Alex Bellows who writes newspaper columns 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:13.360 about mathematics and puzzles sometimes, but it also written a 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.920 book addressing some of these topics. And in these articles 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.239 he talked about people's feelings about odd and even numbers, 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.159 and the idea he raises that if it's true that 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:27.279 people sometimes feel better about even numbers than odd ones, 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.960 what if that sense of liking for even numbers is 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:36.240 related to the concept of processing fluency. Now, this is 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.600 a psychological concept that has come up on the show before. 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:42.479 The gist of the idea is that a lot of 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.880 the judgments that humans make, from whether we like something 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:50.200 to whether we trust a piece of information or believe 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.360 something is true, a lot of these judgments are influenced 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:59.080 by our subconscious reaction to how easy it is for 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:04.039 us to mint process the stimulus in question. There are 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.520 a lot of studies looking at this. I remember this 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:10.600 came up when we were discussing the illusory truth effect, 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:15.640 the idea that if a claim a claim may have 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.000 no real evidence for it, or you may have no 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:21.640 particular reason for believing a claim is true, but if 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.520 you hear it repeated a bunch of times, it starts 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.520 to feel more and more true to you. And one 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:30.799 of the popular explanations for this effect is the idea 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:36.560 that hearing a hearing a claim on subsequent exposures increases 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.880 its processing fluency because it's more familiar to you. You've 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.960 heard it before, so it's easier to take in the second, third, fourth, 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.840 fifth time you hear it, and thus it because it 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.719 has increased processing fluency, it just feels more right. It 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.680 feels more true. One of the key findings that already 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:55.320 came up in some of the papers we talked about 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.880 in Part two is that it seems even numbers are 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:03.000 on average more easily processed than odd numbers are. You know, 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:05.880 when it's easier to think about even numbers, we can 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:10.000 more quickly classify them mathematically as even numbers. It's easier 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:13.760 to think about doing mathematical operations with them. Odd numbers 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.279 are just they're introducing friction to your brain when you 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:20.000 have to consider them. And if this is the case, 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:23.600 it could be a major contributor to these particular situations 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.520 where people seem to like even numbers better than odd numbers. 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:30.719 But of course we don't always like even numbers better 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:33.800 than odd numbers. And this comes back to the issues 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:38.680 of these additional bits of context and cultural associations we 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:42.080 happen to pin onto these numbers, and whether at the 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:44.359 time of us having a feeling about a number or 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.960 making a judgment about it, these other associations become salient. 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.799 So anyway, that brings me to another line of research 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.320 that I stumbled across when looking into this, that I 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:58.640 thought was curious and sort of funny also, which is 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:04.520 the apparent asociation between number parity and the social concept 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:08.560 of gender. Now, in much the same way, it seems 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.640 absurd that without any context, in other words, without quantifying 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:16.600 anything in particular, specific numbers whatever feel good or bad 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.760 to people. It also seems kind of absurd that anyone 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:24.160 would think of standard Arabic numerals as masculine or feminine. 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:28.520 But there are some experiments in which researchers claim to 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:31.920 have found that in some contexts, there is a pattern 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:36.560 of gendered associations between odd and even numbers that emerge. 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:41.000 This is interesting because I was thinking about gendered numbers 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.720 earlier in the research process for this series, because I 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.440 ran across an interesting skit about the number one on 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:48.240 Sesame Street. 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:50.240 Oh care to elaborate? 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.840 Oh sure, sure, So in this sketch this is from 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:54.840 nineteen ninety seven, so this is not one that I 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:57.600 was originally exposed to as a kid. But we have 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.720 number one, which is of course or some muppet. It 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.520 is the numeral one, and it is a she. So 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.280 then the number one. She is feeling really down about 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:12.400 herself because she is such a low value number, like 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:14.880 you know, it's just she's it's one and then zero, 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:19.240 like all the other numbers are are are more potent 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:21.800 than her, more important than her, and she feels she's 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.200 really feeling down in the dumps about it. Well, who 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:27.920 comes up to cheer her up? But the count? Oh, 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:31.520 and the count proceeds to sing an entire song for 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.880 her about how important she is numerically, and then afterwards 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:38.400 he's like, do you feel better? And she's like well 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:39.880 a little bit, and he says, well, I'm going to 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:44.280 sing it for you one more time. But it made 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:46.040 got me thinking. It's like, well, you know, I didn't 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.959 think about one being male female, what have you. I 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:52.880 didn't think about the ginger of the number one. I 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.920 just considered it like a number. But now I'm thinking 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:58.840 of it. I just can't help but picture it with 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:01.520 like the big full lip and the beauty mark here 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:03.880 from this nineteen ninety seven Sesame Street sketch. 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:06.720 Well, that is adorable. I like the Count. I hope 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.480 that the Count can help any number feel better about itself. 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.840 All numbers are important, but one is really special. 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:14.600 Yeah. I think the Count is going to be the 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.679 biggest fan, the biggest supporter of any number. He's not 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.720 going to pull a Harry Neilson and talk about how 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:22.880 crappy the number one is and how number two is 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:25.720 also no good. He's a big fan of all of them. 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:28.959 I like knowing you can count on the Count for 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:33.319 emotional support. So anyway to mention a couple of these 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:38.679 studies apparently finding this association between gender and number parody, 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:41.959 A couple of the ones I came across were by 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:45.599 a pair of researchers named Wilkie and Bodenhausen. One of 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.160 these papers was from twenty twelve in the Journal of 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.040 Experimental Psychology, another one by the same authors from twenty 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:57.000 fifteen in Frontiers in Psychology, and these papers publish the 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.920 results of a number of different experiments about the gender 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:04.400 associations of odd and even numbers. Now, some of these 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:09.280 experiments involved explicit judgments, just asking people straight up whether 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.120 they felt like specific numbers were more masculine or feminine, 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:18.120 and other experiments looked for indirect associations, like people's tendency 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:22.560 to interpret the faces of babies or unfamiliar foreign names 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.760 with different genders when they were labeled with different numbers. 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:30.960 And to note that this indirect measure here does rely 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:35.120 on implicit association tests, which have been subjected to various 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:39.760 methodological critiques over the years. They've undergone some refinements over 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.000 time to try to improve reliability, but there's still sort 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:46.040 of debates about how they can be depended on and 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:49.280 in what context. So anyway, caution on relying too much 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.160 on the implicit parts of these findings, But the authors 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.680 say from the totality of their experiments that on average, 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.720 for some reason, people from sample groups within the United 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:04.120 States are more likely to say that odd numbers are 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:08.560 masculine and even numbers are feminine. And while that's the 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:12.000 general trend, there are some exceptions and caveats. While they 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:14.920 say that this pattern was on average true for everyone, 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.240 the association was stronger among women, So on average, women 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.480 were more likely to view odd numbers as more masculine 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:27.079 and less feminine than even numbers. Weirdly, this is where 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.319 it starts getting funny. I thought the numbers in when 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.520 the numbers involved were two digit instead of one digit, 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:38.640 men started to drift away from this parody association and 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:43.360 started to say that all numbers were masculine, regardless of parity. 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:46.600 So I don't whenever we look at studies like this. 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.160 By the way, I always like raise caution because I 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.600 just know from experience a lot of people get real 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:57.079 excited about like gender differences in responses to psychological experiments 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:00.520 and then start overinterpreting, thinking it explains everything about men 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:03.240 and women. You know why my husband or my wife 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:05.679 acts a certain way, et cetera. And so I will 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:07.880 raise the same caution here. You know, it's just a 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.120 few experiments we're not sure if this is a super 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.280 robust finding, and even if it is robust, it's easy 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:15.280 to get carried away just reading too much into little 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:19.920 psychological quirks like this. However, I could not resist finding 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.560 it hilarious to imagine a guy looking at numbers higher 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:26.800 than nine and being like, thirty four. Huh, that's a 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:28.760 big number. That's a macho man. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:31.600 In between thoughts about ancient real right. 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.080 Yeah, so in reality it's probably not that simple, but 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:39.640 I was laughing for several minutes after I read this. Anyway, 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.400 the authors of these studies, so they're making an argument 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:48.120 not that there actually is something objectively or universally gendered 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:51.160 about even and odd numbers, and instead they're sort of 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.599 making a case about what they call quote the pervasiveness 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:58.680 of gender as a social scaffolding for generating understandings of 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.319 abstract concept. So the way I take that is they're 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:05.640 sort of saying gender is such an important concept to 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:10.240 people that we subconsciously apply it to categories of objects 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.600 that have nothing to do with the primary understanding of 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:17.800 masculinity or femininity. It's just like a major way of 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.040 making category distinctions that the brain kind of defaults to 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.319 even in situations that don't have anything to do with 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:28.160 biological sex or with the social roles of gender. 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.079 Right right, So yeah, it wouldn't be like the hypothetical 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.640 male in question is making a conscious effort to think 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:41.080 about all higher numbers as men. It's a little more nuance, 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.240 a little more subconscious than that. 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.800 Now I mentioned that those studies were done on us 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.160 test subjects. I came across an interesting variation with respect 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:54.880 to culture. So there was a twenty twenty one study 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:59.520 in Frontiers and Psychology by Jordan Yakani and Sheen which 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:04.240 found some consistency and some variation across cultures regarding the 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:09.400 perceived gender of numbers. These researchers tested whether the same 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.120 patterns of association between number parity and gender would show 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:17.240 up among Arabic speaking people native to the UAE, and 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:20.720 their top level findings were that there were patterns of 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:25.600 gender association with number parity, but on the implicit association 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.800 of numbers with faces. The subjects in the UAE were 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:33.240 more likely to associate even numbers with their own gender, 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:38.040 whichever that was so, men seeing even numbers as more masculine, 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:42.160 women seeing even numbers as more feminine, and these findings 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:47.360 indicate that it may be cross culturally common to associate 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:49.920 even in odd numbers with gender, at least in some 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.480 weekly held way, to make some kind of weak association 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:56.720 of that kind, but that the association can vary from 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:59.600 culture to culture, which actually makes a lot of sense 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.160 to me that I think the idea would sort of 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:06.000 be that gender is a category lens that we're very 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.520 quick to apply to all kinds of phenomena outside of 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.880 its primary cultural meaning. But exactly how we apply it 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:17.520 probably depends on a lot of subtle influences that can 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.920 easily vary person to person and culture to culture, though 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.400 apparently within a given language culture, one way of making 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.520 the association is probably more common than another. So anyway, 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.040 all the warnings I gave up top about not reading 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:33.040 too much into these kinds of findings, but I do 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.440 think if this is basically on the right track, it's 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.800 an interesting example of the way that we just kind 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:44.560 of recklessly apply category distinctions across every domain of life, 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:48.720 whether it really makes direct sense or not. You know, 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:50.880 I think we if we ever talked about the idea 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:52.600 on the show before. Some people seem to think like 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:54.440 dogs or boys, cats or girls. 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:58.680 Yeah, I have caught myself following into that trap as well, 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.600 Like I kind of on a default lene assume cats 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:05.080 or girls and dogs are boys until I know differently 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.720 concerning individual cats and dogs, And I don't know. One 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:10.880 reason for that is probably that I've only ever had cats, 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.480 and those cats have always been girls. I don't know, yeah, 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.360 female cats. Sorry, some of them have been very old ladies. 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.800 Then again, at least cats and dogs are like animals, 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.720 you know. It's I guess it's even funnier thinking about 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:28.840 the way that we we just wantonly apply these categories, 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:33.160 possibly even to things like abstract numbers and uh, symbols 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:36.280 that that don't even have like, you know, bodies or 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:37.240 minds or anything. 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:40.800 Yeah. The only the other prime example that comes to 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:44.240 mind is when especially a ship, but sometimes other vehicles 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:45.880 or gendered as female. 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:48.680 Yeah, that's that always seemed funny to me. 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:01.520 All right. Now, for this next little bit, I wanted 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.840 to talk briefly about the word odd. I was looking 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:06.760 at other angles on odd and even, and I came 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.399 across this excellent write up on Webster's and it points 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.000 out that the word in English comes from the Old 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:19.760 Norse word audie odd i meaning point of land in 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:24.480 the geographical sense, so it's like the point of a triangle, 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:28.159 and so it eventually came to mean triangle, and it 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:31.119 also came to mean odd, as the point of a 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:35.040 triangle triangle must always oppose the two other corners, so 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.520 it's like the two other corners are an even pair, 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.480 and if they were to leave, then the audi is alone. 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:45.480 Wow, that's almost poetic. That's like a beautiful etymology. 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.280 Yeah. And eventually from here the term transfers over into English, 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.760 and by the fourteenth century it was written down, so 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:54.440 you know, it may have made the journey. It probably 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.240 it definitely made the journey earlier than that, but that's 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.520 when we have written evidence of it. And initially the 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:04.240 word odd meant without a corresponding mate, so it was 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.640 still like tied up with this idea of like two 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:09.919 leave and leave one. But then it comes to mean 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:14.399 irregular or non conformist. And Webster's notes that during the 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:18.159 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this usage of odd in English 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:20.640 language was a good thing. It meant you stood out, 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.160 you know, it's like, oh, look at that odd character there, 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:24.920 We've got to go chat him up. He has lots 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.359 of interesting things to say as he drinketh from his 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:31.439 skull and walketh his bear. But then by the seventeenth 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:35.639 century it comes to lean more toward the eccentric and 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:38.480 even dare we say the weird, in the sense that 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.400 you might be like, let's stay away from the guy 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:43.840 with the bear and the skull. Lord knows what he's 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.960 going to talk about. Let's keep a distance. Wow. 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:50.520 It almost invokes like a story in the sense that 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:52.760 if you imagine there were three people and two of 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.760 them left, and now one is odd. Why did the 0:18:55.800 --> 0:19:00.440 other two leave? Were they driven away by the behavior 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:02.919 of the first one? Or could they just not handle 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:03.600 the genius? 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.040 Yes, and my apologies to Lord Byron Fans since he's 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:12.400 barely covered in the centuries reference there. But Webster's also 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:14.800 points out that the use of the noun odd for 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.240 a point of land seems to have crossed over a 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:22.440 second time into English during the nineteenth century, though more 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:26.040 exclusively to northern England and Scotland. Oh and one more 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:29.040 little bit here, that I ran across Audi is also 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:33.520 the name of a town in Iceland, and well, I'm 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.840 not as sure about the direct linguistic connection here. Between 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:39.160 what we're talking about and the name of this town, 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.920 I did run across a picture of a statue of 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.399 Samon the Wise hitting the Devil and the devil may 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:49.040 or may not be in the form of a seal 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:53.439 here with a bible. This was I found this a 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:55.520 photograph of this on a blog post by eric O. 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:59.080 Scott on the website The Wild Hunt. And this ties 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.399 into a passed up episode because in our series on 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:06.480 Shadows from last October that is going to re air 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.040 this October, we talked a little bit about the shadow 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:13.560 wizard and priest Semon Semond or Sevender the Wise, who 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.040 has various encounters with the Devil. I don't think we 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:19.359 talked about him hitting the devil with a bible, but 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:22.119 there is an episode where he ends up having his 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:23.760 shadow stolen by the devil. 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:26.960 Right, doesn't he go to like the Devil's College or 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.400 the Devil's School to learn the learn the magical arts. 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:32.639 But then the devil is supposed to grab one of 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.000 the students at the end of the semester and keep them. 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:39.320 But Seemen. They're various tellings, but Seeman finds some way 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:40.919 to kind of trick the devil and escape. 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:43.440 Yeah. Yeah, and he like goes to snatch his soul 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.280 and gets his shadow instead, and so forth. So I 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:49.800 don't know, I'm drifting drifting off topic here, but we're 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:53.639 still somewhere in the neighborhood of a lot and even now. 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.560 Next I would like to turn to evens and odds 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:02.320 in biology. This is an area that where you can, 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:04.359 you know, I guess with any of this, you have to, 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:06.280 especially when you're playing in a biology, you have to 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:10.000 think about like the relationship between numbers in reality, and 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:11.720 you can get you know, kind of go do a 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:14.240 fair amount of navel gazing on that in and of itself. 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.000 But you know, just as we see a tendency for 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:21.959 external symmetry and biological organisms, we at least to some extent, 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:26.920 see a tendency toward even numbers. Again, huge caveat here. 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.200 It kind of it can also depend on exactly how 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:30.959 you want to cut it, because you know, you can 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:34.080 take a quick survey of your own body and chances 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:36.879 are you're going to find some even numbers in play. 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:42.280 You know, two arms, two legs, four limbs, total, ten fingers, 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:45.800 ten toes, two eyes, two nostrils, and so forth. On 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:47.840 the other hand, I mean, yes, you do have one 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:51.159 mouth and so forth. But you know, the still of 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:54.200 course lines up with the basic idea of bilateral symmetry. 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:56.680 Divide a creature down the middle and you have two 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.000 equal sides, though of course we also have to throw 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:02.199 and the other caveat that the average human being is 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:06.160 not perfectly symmetrical, and artificially symmetrical faces tend to read 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:07.440 as uncanny to us. 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:11.639 For this reason, we actually did a series on biological 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:15.520 symmetry and asymmetry a couple of years back. I don't 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.200 recall was that the series called the Lesser of two 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:19.400 crab claws, where. 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:22.879 I think the fiddler crabs mm hm, yes, because you know, 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:25.240 there are plenty of examples too in the biological world 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:27.320 which we get into in that series, where there is 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.840 a glaring asymmetry. So anyway, it would be a gross mistake. Though, 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:32.760 coming back to odds and evens, if you were to 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:35.480 say that you only see even numbers and organisms, that 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.000 is absolutely not true, and they're ultimately far more complex 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:42.760 and satisfying ways to apply numbers more universally to nature, 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.120 such as say the Fibonacci sequence so forth. But it's 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:48.840 still interesting to see cases where there is a there 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:53.000 seems to be a tendency toward even numbers, and still 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:58.000 looking at the exceptions to those possible rules and possible tendencies. 0:22:58.160 --> 0:23:01.400 One place that start is with chromosomes. So a chromosome 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.439 is a DNA package that contains all the genetic material 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.040 of an organism, and the chromosome count for individual species 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:10.960