142857

 I have been enamored with numbers for a fair while now. The idea behind this post is to share some of that love with my friends and the world. Maybe it will reaffirm the doubts in your mind about my sanity, maybe it will make you see numbers in an entirely new light, at the very least it will be an interesting tid bit of trivia. So, onto 142857. It is nothing but 1 divided by 7. 1/7 = 0.142857 recurring. I believe thats what caught my attention in the beginning, the 6 number combination recurring, which is rare, I thought. 1/3 = 0.333333 recurring but its just one number recurring. similarly, 1/6 = 0.16666 recurring, just one digit recurring. However the fractions of 7 are way more fascinating as you can see below.

1/7 = 0.142857

2/7 = 0.285714

3/7 = 0.428571

4/7 = 0.571428

5/7 = 0.714285

6/7 = 0.857142

Spot the pattern yet? Its the same six digits, doing a little dance! They go round and round, keeping their respective positions, taking the first spot after the decimal in turns.

And the fun part with playing with fractions is they always translate nicely into percentages, which is especially helpful when trying to comprehend data. So next time you come across 43% it is definitely in the realm of possibility that it pops up in your mind "Hey that means 3/7!" . So while others pull out their calculator and jump through hoops trying to do the math, you just go 43% of 700, well thats 3/7 of 700 so 300. Tadaaa!