My Favorite Number Twelve

My favorite number is twelve. It's simply wonderful!

It's quite useful for dividing: twelve of anything can be evenly split into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths.

But even more important, I believe that twelve is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Early humans must have been quite impressed with the relationship between the two brightest heavenly bodies: the sun and the moon. From the moment when the sun reaches its highest point on the meridian (noon on the summer solstice) until it does again one year later, the moon waxes and wanes a total of twelve times. Twelve times! This fundamental pattern must have had cosmic significance to early humans grasping for meaning.

Twelve is a number that manifests itself in life, nature, religion, mathematics, technology, and culture in many interesting and provocative ways:

• There are twelve months of the year, twelve hours on the face of a clock, and twelve signs of the Zodiac.
• Hercules was required to perform twelve labors in twelve years to atone for his transgressions.
• Achilles gave King Priam twelve days to prepare for his son Hector's funeral in the Iliad.
• Twelve is the number of axes through Odysseus had to shoot an arrow to win Penelope.
• A regular dodecahedron has twelve pentagonal sides.
• A musical octave has twelve chromatic tones.
• There were twelve tribes of Israel, twelve disciples of Jesus, and twelve men who have walked on the moon.
• The Twelver Shi'a Muslim sect believes that the Twelfth Imam (Islamic preceptor) did not die.
• There are twelve days of Christmas, twelve steps of recovery programs, twelve jurors on American juries, and twelve buttons of touch-tone telephones.
• Twelve is the product of 1-cubed times two-squared times three to the first power.
• A perfect game in bowling consists of twelve consecutive strikes.
• One more than twelve feels "unlucky."

Question: Where else do you see twelve appear? What do you make of it? What's your favorite number?

Comments

[Valeria Maltoni]

Roger, did I tell you lately how much I enjoy your posts? This is terrific -- and you have 12 bullets!

[shelbey]

2 x 12 = the number of letters in "a whack on the side of the head"....

[Roger von Oech]

Valeria: You are so kind! And so perceptive too — to notice my twelve bullet points.

Shelbey: Very perceptive as well!

[Cam Beck]

12 x 8 = The number of pages in the "Ball of Whacks" handbook.

[Cam Beck]

For that matter...

12 = The number of letters in "Ball of Whacks"

[shelbey]

perhaps this hinges too much on hours, which was an arbitrary division way-back-when [or was it?]-- what about the trope of the stroke of twelve, midnight, when magical things happen?

my favorite number is thirteen. my bday is the 13th, and for some odd reason, 13 pops up as an assigned number, a day when things happen, or part of larger patterns in my life. baker's dozen, half a butterfly, an age of major transformatins. i am a magnet for 13. perhaps i am one of 13's favorite people!

[ann michael]

Roger-

Something about seeing a large number 12 on your blog when the page opened made me smile!

I don't think I have a favorite number (although I too, have always liked 13). If I had to pick one it would probably be 0 or infinity.

Ann

[Ottzie]

My grandson is trying to complete a letter-substitution quiz that the teacher gave out. We are all stumped with this one: 12 N of D

Can you help us out??

[Ottzie]

Roger,

Thanks for trying to figure out what "12 N of D" meant!! We, in the meantime, guessed correctly: The answer was "12 number of disciples" Our grandson, and only one other student, had all the questions answered correctly. Again, appreciated your response!!

Thank You,

Jim

[Andrew John Johnstone]

Hi My names Andrew John Johnstone. I was born on the 12th of February. Abraham Lincoln was born on the 12th of February. Abe was assassinated & replaced by Andrew Johnson. I have no interest running for government but thought that was pretty cool. Great bands with twelve connotations. 1200 Techniques, D12. In the movie 'The Ring' I believe that it was cabin 12 that the well was built over. The Simpsons & Family guy also insert the number 12 into many episodes. 12 is the best.

[Mitch]

In all seriousness my favourtie number is 359 i dont know why but it's such a cool number. The 3 by itself isn't great, the 5 is ok but bringing them all together adds a great combination of 3 which is yellow 5 has no color and 9 finishes it off with a pearlescent/metallic purple. I know it sounds crazy but oh well haha

[Terrioun frye]

do you'll have mor examples.

[argen]

i like this number b'coz this my favorite number..tnx u ol...

[Mark]

One fourth of 12 is three, and one third of 12 is four. Nifty, eh?

Pair of cube dice? Total maximum 12. 12 inches to a ruler. 12 is the most you can count to on one hand using your thumb as a pointer and each finger joint as a mark on a counter. Open up your phone -- chances are there's a nearly-square grid of 12 number-style buttons on it, (including *, 0 and #). 12 is twice 6, which is another nifty number -- Twin primes are always found straddling 6 * N, and 6 is half of 12. Life is based on carbon, element number 6. The minimum elements required to make carbon are 6 protons and 6 electrons, for a total of 12 components.

I really wish we used 12 as our base number system instead of 10. Heck, even Pi in base 10 is encouraging us to love twelve: 3.14 -> 3 * 1 * 4 = 12!