Pythagoreans Feared Number Seventeen

Among Pythagoras’s followers in ancient Greece, the number 17 held a troubling place. It sat between 16 and 18, two numbers that create uniquely perfect quadrilaterals whose areas equal their perimeters, while 17 disrupted this harmony. Due to this imbalance, the Pythagoreans regarded 17 as a symbol of disorder, avoided it in their mathematical work, and consequently developed a strong dislike for it.

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