Please help resolve a really dumb question

[ratatosk]

Today's question is about what counts as a "nice round number". Don't ask me what that is supposed to mean -- that's what's in dispute in the first place. I am only asking about the number that came up in conversation, since testing this exhaustively would tax the attention span of most people.

First, answer the general question:

Poll Nice Round Numbers

Comments

[contradictacat]

Given that 7 has a lot of baggage associated with it, like 3, 9 and 13, 7 by itself tends to Mean Something to some people. This makes it both better and worse for use as a "nice round number".

As a number to describe the number of people one is dating, seven seems to take on a tone of "1, 2, many, lots".

of course, it's also specific enough, and there are some people who have dated that many people in the past, that someone might read an answer of "uh...seven?" at face value.

[spacehawk]

It is in that it is a natural number. It is not in that it is not even.

[ratatosk]

I think that answer is marginally better than another one I got which was "no, actually 7 is kind of pointy -- now, 0 is a nice round number." :P

(not spelled out for visual effect)

[diatom]

I'm grinning at that...

[spacehawk]

^_^

One can not be dating a non-whole number of people (unless one weights relationships in some way), so that would make seven not a nice round number!

[chanaleh]

To me, seven is only a "nice round number" relative to a space of noninteger numbers, preferably between 0 and 20.

[spacehawk]

I said something like this, yes. It is a "nice round number" compared to, for example, pi.

[spacehawk]

Oh, very good point!

[docstrange]

It's round in base-7.

[vespid_interest]

That was my thought. In base 10, odd integers can't be round, and prime numbers feel the least round of all. *shudder*