Numbers with Personality

In terms of Major’s paper, I would say that Ramanujan had a personal connection to numbers. Given what he said about positive integers, and Major’s paper I would assume Ramanujan has OLP as he is attributing personal characteristics to numbers.

I think the points Major brings up in her paper regarding number personality and the ways in which different people interpret numbers could be very interesting to introduce to high school students. I definitely think I would introduce aspects of this concept in the classroom when I thought it would add to the material being taught. For instance, when teaching the Pythagorean Theorem, I talk about how Pythagoras and his followers believed every number had a symbolic identity. I do think this topic of numbers with personality could be used as a good way to get students engaged and potentially help make connections to the way they think of and interpret numbers. Another way I may use these ideas in the classroom is creating an activity where students are asked to pick a number and describe or draw it to represent the personality they feel the number has. Additionally, I would most definitely introduce the idea of synaesthesia and OLP. One of my friends who is also a math teacher has synaesthesia, however she wasn’t aware she had it until someone brought it up one day as an adult, so I think it is an interesting note to make especially in a math class where students could be assigning personalities or colours to numbers.

I don't think numbers particularly have different personalities for me. However I do kind of think of odd numbers as harsher more set in stone numbers for some reason. That being said I have a very black and white thinking mind, so a number to me is a number and I have not typically thought of a number, month, letter or days of the week as anything other than what they are and what they are used for. However, I would say certain summer months vs winter months have different personalities for me just due to the weather and the activities I do during those months. I have always thought of the summer months as loud happy months, whereas the winter months I think of as quite quiet. Although, I have always had certain subjects associated with colours and I don’t have a reason for it that I am aware of. For instance I think of math as a very blue subject and I think of science as a green subject, and psychology as a red subject.