---
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
- en
tags:
- survey
- numbers
- psychology
- culture
- human-data
- rapidata
pretty_name: What Is Your Favorite Number?
size_categories:
- 10K<n<100K
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: data/train-*
dataset_info:
  features:
  - name: answer
    dtype: float64
  - name: answer_raw
    dtype: string
  - name: country
    dtype: string
  - name: language
    dtype: string
  - name: age
    dtype: string
  - name: gender
    dtype: string
  - name: occupation
    dtype: string
  splits:
  - name: train
    num_examples: 11631
---

# What Is Your Favorite Number?

We asked 11,631 people in 124 countries one question:

> **What is your favorite number?**

It took about 30 minutes to collect on the [Rapidata](https://rapidata.ai) network.

If you enjoy this dataset, consider liking it. We will keep asking humanity fun questions.

## What people said

![The world's favorite numbers](assets/top15.png)

- **7 is the world's favorite number.** 18% of all answers, more than twice the runner-up (5). It ranks first in every one of the top ten countries and in every age group. Japan is the most devoted at 27%.
- **Odd beats even**, 63% to 37%. Two thirds of everyone picked a single digit.
- **13 is a Western thing.** Spain 4.4%, United Kingdom 4.3%, United States 4.3%. Turkey 0.4%, Algeria 0.4%, Pakistan 0.7%.
- **Japan does not avoid 4.** Tetraphobia predicts a dip, but Japan picks 4 at the global rate.
- **67 is a live meme.** Third place overall, driven almost entirely by the Philippines (8.8% there) and by respondents under 18. It nearly disappears between ages 30 and 49.
- **Preference for 7 grows with age**, from 15% under 18 to 21% at 50 to 64.

![Single digits](assets/single_digits.png)

![Lucky 13 by country](assets/thirteen.png)

![7 and 67 by age group](assets/by_age.png)

## Columns

One row per person who answered.

| Column | Description |
| --- | --- |
| `answer` | The favorite number as a float. Almost always a whole number, but `3.14` and `7.5` are in here too. |
| `answer_raw` | What the respondent actually typed, with surrounding whitespace trimmed. |
| `country` | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code of the respondent. |
| `language` | Language the respondent uses on the network. |
| `age` | Predicted age bracket: `0-17`, `18-29`, `30-39`, `40-49`, `50-64`, `65+`. May be empty. |
| `gender` | Predicted gender: `Female`, `Male`, `Other`. May be empty. |
| `occupation` | Predicted occupation or education status. May be empty. |

Age, gender and occupation come from Rapidata's demographic model rather than self-report, and are empty for roughly a fifth of rows. Rows are shuffled.

## How answers were cleaned

Respondents typed free text. We kept an answer when it contained exactly one distinct number, so `7`, `67!!!`, `3.14`, `8 i like how simple it is` and `7` typed twice all count, while `6-7`, `2 and 4` and dates do not. Answers that were only a spelled-out number, such as `seven` or `siete`, count too. Numbers above 2^53, which are all mashed keyboards, along with letters, symbols and "I don't have one", were dropped. About 6% of responses were removed this way.

## Quick start

```python
from datasets import load_dataset
df = load_dataset("Rapidata/favorite-number")["train"].to_pandas()
df.answer.value_counts(normalize=True).head(10)
```

## Prior work

- Alex Bellos, 2014: an online favorite-number poll of about 44,000 self-selected respondents. 7 won at roughly 10%.
- Kubovy & Psotka, 1976: *The predominance of seven and the apparent spontaneity of numerical choices.*
- Milikowski & Elshout, 1995: *What makes a number easy to remember?*

## Citation

```bibtex
@misc{rapidata2026favoritenumber,
  title  = {What Is Your Favorite Number? 11,631 answers from 124 countries},
  author = {Rapidata},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/Rapidata/favorite-number}
}
```

- **Curated by:** [Rapidata](https://rapidata.ai)
- **License:** CC BY 4.0