Although the computer-generated charts are statistically meaningless, the persistence of number '17' in humans likely has its reason.<p>The first thing that comes to my mind is that this happens because 17 the number from 1 to 20 that we come into most rarely. When we learn multiplication at school, it doesn't have any factors so we tend to skip it, and for the same reason it's rare to encounter it in various problems. This happens also to '7', but '7' is small enough to occur in many occasions such as counting a number of items etc. So, maybe we are more inclined to pick '17' as 'random' because we rarely meet it. Maybe.
My economics teacher once used the number 17 as a random number twice in one class, without noticing.<p>A note on the number 7: magicians actually use the frequency of that number being picked for their tricks. If an amateur card magician asks you to pick a number, for example, "between 5 and 10" or the more daring "between 1 and 10" they want you to say 7. Now that you know this, though, I'd rather you humor us if you're ever asked..
This is a really bad analysis. I'd be willing to guess the author doesn't know much about statistics. (Or more charitably, he's just trying too hard to write for people who don't understand statistics.)<p>That said, it does look like the sample was large enough for the results to be valid, at least for "17".
23 is. Though I am pretty rational person, I can't seem to explain why I see 23 all around. (Guessing it is some sort of psychological bias -- but the evidence from my everyday experience just baffles me).<p>See this: 23 enigma <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma</a>