FIGURE IT OUT: Numbers can delight or depress those with a superstitious bent

CFP

If you are in a skyscraper in Manhattan, don't bother looking for the 13th floor, and if you want to get a new phone number in Beijing, be prepared to pay extra if it has the numeral eight in it. For all the differences Chinese culture and American culture have, they do share a love of lucky numbers and other superstitious beliefs.

‘"The content of superstitions and the metaphors we use change from culture to culture-but not the underlying shock and awe that yielded them in the first place," says Dr. Sam Vaknin, author of The Science of Superstitions.

The number 13 is so toxic in Western culture that it has a phobia named after it: triskaidekaphobia. Hotels will sometimes omit 13 in numbering their rooms and some high-rise buildings leave out floor 13 in their designs. No one knows for sure why 13 is considered so unlucky. Some experts believe it is tied to Christian traditions that names Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, as the 13th to sit at the Last Supper. Others believe the number's unluckiness is simply due to the fact that one person is always left over if a group of 13 is divided into two, three, four or six equal groups.

Regardless of its history, Westerners still avoid the number. On Continental, Air France, AirTran, KLM and Iberia Airlines there is no row 13.

"Most people wouldn't want to sit there," Judy Graham-Weaver, a spokesperson for AirTran, told David Grossman of USA Today. "Whether we believe in the superstition or not, if it's the perception of the community we need to go by that."

Combine the unluckiness of 13 with a Friday, and you have the scariest day of the year. Friday the 13th is perhaps considered unfortunate because public executions in England during the Middle Ages were carried out on Fridays.

To balance out evil 13, seven is the luckiest number for Americans. Tens of thousands of happy couples chose July 7, 2007, as their wedding day (07-07-07), believing it would bring them good luck and happiness. Seven often has religious connotations as well. In Christian beliefs, the world was created in seven days, including the final day of rest. Mathematically, the mathematician Pythagoras called it the perfect number based on adding three and four-the triangle and the square-the perfect figures. And in the natural world there are seven seas, seven visible celestial bodies before modern astronomy, seven moon phases and seven colors in a rainbow.

Other lucky or unlucky numbers in Western culture include 666, considered a cursed number in Christian tradition, and 11 has recently been added to the list, because of the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and because it was the flight number of one of the hijacked planes involved in the attacks.

The idea of lucky numbers can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, wrote Allison Linn on MSNBC.com, and can be found in a variety of cultures.

"It's just part of the way humans are wired, I suppose. Humans need religion and they need numbers," said Underwood Dudley, a retired mathematics professor from DePauw University and author of Numerology: Or What Pythagoras Wrought, in the MSNBC article.

Just as thousands of Americans wed on 07-07-07, picking the perfect date for the Olympic Games in China was easy: August 8, 2008 (08-08-08) at 8:08 p.m. Chinese culture has numerous lucky and unlucky numbers, many because the number sounds similar to another word in Mandarin. Eight is considered very auspicious because it sounds similar to the word for fortune or prosperity in Mandarin. The telephone number 8888-8888 famously sold for nearly $300,000 in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province, and license plates with the number 8 in them are also considered valuable.

While Western lucky or unlucky numbers usually have their roots in religious traditions, Chinese numbers usually carry a meaning based on their homonyms, or what other words in Mandarin that they sound like. The number four is perhaps the unluckiest number in Chinese culture, as it sounds like the word for "death." Some buildings will skip the number entirely when labeling apartment numbers or floors, just as Western developers avoid 13.

"So strong is this ‘tetraphobia,' or fear of the number four, that its presence in an apartment number or street address can even have a decreasing effect on the value of the property," said author Stina Bjorkell on Radio86, a website devoted to Chinese culture.

Six is a homonym for the Mandarin word for "flowing" or "smooth."

"This is the reason why the Western ominous number combination 666 does not get the hairs on the back of Chinese people to stand up. The ‘devil's number' is a particularly lucky one in the Chinese language, as it sounds close to the words meaning ‘things are going smoothly,'" Bjorkell said.

Combinations of numbers also have meanings in China. The number 514 is considered especially bad as it sounds like the phrase "I will die."

A researcher at the University of California-San Diego found that deaths caused by heart attacks among U.S. residents of Chinese and Japanese descent tend to spike on the fourth of the month, an increase linked to the psychological stress brought about by fear of the number itself. Other researchers have labeled the spike, however, as a coincidence.

As the world becomes more connected, experts believe Eastern and Western superstitions may blend together. Already, some buildings in Hong Kong are avoiding a 13th floor, and they also leave out any floors with the number four. All Nippon Airways omits rows 4 and 9 for Eastern sensibilities and also 13 for Western customers. Other Asian carriers, including Cathy Pacific, Malaysian, Singapore and Thai Airways, also skip row 13.

And when Continental Airlines launched a route from Beijing to Newark, it named the flight 88 and offered a round trip fare of $888.

Whatever the foundation for the belief, globalization is spreading superstitions across cultures. Companies try to avoid numbers that may make their customers ill at ease and maximize numbers that are considered lucky. The fascination with the mysterious and unexplainable is a human trait.

"The planets influence our lives, dry coffee sediments contain information about the future, black cats portend disasters, certain dates are propitious, and certain numbers are to be avoided. The world is unsafe because it can never be fathomed. But the fact that we--limited as we are--cannot learn about a hidden connection should not imply that it does not exist," said Vaknin.