A mythical number is a
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ...
used and accepted as deriving from
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
investigation and/or careful selection, but whose origin is unknown and whose basis is unsubstantiated. An example is the number 48 billion, which has often been accepted as the number of dollars per year of identity theft. This number "has appeared in hundreds of news stories, including a New York Times piece"
[Shafer,]
The (Ongoing) Vitality of Mythical Numbers
/ref> despite the fact that it has been shown repeatedly to be highly inaccurate. The term was coined in 1971 by Max Singer
Max or MAX may refer to:
Animals
* Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog
* Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE)
* Max (gorilla) ( ...
, one of the founders of the Hudson Institute
The Hudson Institute is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Co ...
.
The origins of such numbers are akin to those of urban legend
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
s and may include (among others):
* misinterpretation of examples
* extrapolation from apparently similar fields
* especially successful prank
A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. ...
s
* comical results
* guess-estimates by public officials
* deliberate misinformation
See also
* Confabulation
In psychology, confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage (especially aneurysm in the an ...
* Factoid
A factoid is either an invented or assumed statement presented as a fact, ''or'' a true but brief or trivial item of news or information.
The term was coined in 1973 by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a piece of information that becomes ac ...
* For all intents and purposes
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
* Newspeak
Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements ...
* Noble lie
In politics, a noble lie is a myth or a lie typically of religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in '' The Republic''.
In rel ...
* Truthiness
Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ig ...
* Verisimilitude
In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be clos ...
References
Bibliography
Online
at edwardtufte.com.
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Numbers
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