The Secret Lives of Numbers (2002: Golan Levin, Jonathan Feinberg, Shelly Wynecoop and Martin Wattenberg) is an interactive data visualization and online artwork, commissioned by Turbulence.org. An exhaustive empirical study was conducted to determine the relative popularity of every integer between zero and one million. The resulting information exhibits an extraordinary variety of patterns which reflect our culture, our minds, and our bodies -- forming a numeric snapshot of the collective consciousness. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, these analyses are returned to the public in the form of an interactive visualization, whose aim is to provoke awareness of one's own numeric manifestations.
The authors conducted an exhaustive empirical study, with the aid of custom software, public search engines and powerful statistical techniques, in order to determine the relative popularity of every integer between 0 and one million. The resulting information, presented in an interactive online information visualization, exhibits an extraordinary variety of patterns which reflect our culture, our minds, and our bodies.
For example, certain numbers, such as 212, 486, 911, 1040, 1492, 1776, 68040, or 90210, occur more frequently than their neighbors because they are used to denominate the phone numbers, tax forms, computer chips, famous dates, or television programs that figure prominently in our culture. Regular periodicities in the data, located at multiples and powers of ten, mirror our cognitive preference for round numbers in our biologically-driven base-10 numbering system. Certain numbers, such as 12345 or 8888, appear to be more popular simply because they are easier to remember.
The Secret Lives of Numbers (2002; Taiwanese documentation 2004)
The Secret Lives of Numbers was implemented in 2002 as a Java applet. Appropriately-configured browsers can present the online work here at Turbulence.org.
