On the Poetics of Numbers, Or, All Work and No Play Makes Bartleby a du11 8OY!

I have been checking invoices in the online database for my temp job for the last two days -- invoices from dozens of companies, each of which has its own style. It is very boring work, but my mind will find something to latch onto... (Warning: don't read this if you're in a hurry!)

I have a theory: (perhaps a "theory")

1. Even numbers of digits are more 'human', i.e., easier to remember, find patterns in, etc. than odd numbers of digits, especially as the number grows larger.
   
2. Given that fewer digits are easier to remember, there is an ideal number of digits for an invoice (or ID or other such number) which has enough digits to maximize the total possible unique numbers while allowing for easiest recognition and commitment to (short term) memory.

Phone numbers and SSNs are 7 digits [SSNs actually have 9 (Thanks Roger)--Ed.] -- not ideal by my theory. Eight and twelve would be preferable. Of course ISBNs have been 10 digits and now are 13 -- bad news by my theory -- or "theory". Silly -- but is it? ISBNs are for machines (computers) not people. And phone numbers and SSNs are dashes to allow us to comprehend them. I'm talking about straight numbers, no dashes. How does the mind organize them when attempting to "digest" them at a glance?

This line of thinking was compelled by noticing the difference between invoices for the copier companies Ikon and Xerox. Ikon's invoice numbers are 8 digits, Xerox's are 9. I like Ikon's better. (E.g.: 15151323; 15162728). I find that two 4-digit numbers are easier to comprehend in a glance than three 3-digit numbers. But there was another reason for my reaction. The invoice numbers from Xerox tend to begin with the three numbers 198. When not thinking about it, I could not help but group the first four digits together -- 1987, 1983, etc -- due to the suggestion of the year (the 1980s). However, when confronted with the last 5 digits, my tendency was to continue to see two sets of four --only with one extra lone digit in between -- which is harder to comprehend at a glance (E.g.: 198523085).

I know, It's crazy to be thinking much less blogging about this, but having been inspired by Douglas Hofstadter, I make no apology. Hofstadter is quite inspiring on the challenges of Artificial Intelligence, the complexity of human pattern recognition, and the analysis of the creative process -- all of which he finds are connected. (Letter Spirit was a program which attempted - with no little success, so far as it went! - to distill the essence of analogy in a computer program.)

But to return to my rambling, another company, Oce Imagistics, uses a 9-digit number but which more naturally divides itself into three 3-digit sets (e.g., 201899874). Image Integrator , a company out of Syracuse, uses a 5-digit invoice number. Very business-like (ie inhuman, machinelike due to the odd number of digits), but short for easy use. I think 6-digit invoice numbers are relatively common as well -- a nice compromise with 2 sets of 3. (E.g.: Ricoh Business Systems, 153006, 143699, 128266) Of course, one could also see these as 3 sets of 2, but that's not how I see them when punching them into the computer to check them -- 2 sets of 3 seems easier and faster for my mind (and short-term memory) to process. Efficiency and accuracy and ease of manipulability are the natural criteria as per function. The aesthetics of the business office lie in its efficiency, the smallest intersection of form vs. function. The beauty of form in a set of numbers is based in its internal patterns as suggested by repetition, patterns of even vs. odd, etc.

I think the worst offender of both aesthetics and utility is a company based in Schenectady, which I won't name, but whose invoice numbers use a combination of letters and numbers in a most annoying way. Some will use letters at the beginning or the end (Ikon: 1547919A) or just at the beginning (SDIN002356), but this company does both at once, and worse still, ends often with a number 'one' followed by the letter 'I', thus: MV070501I. How awful is that? The nerve. (Another bad one is Eastman Kodak: 243F05244. Putting a letter in the middle of a number like that! Very ugly.) I suppose the utility of recognizing one's own invoice number just from the number itself is the advantage in so annoyingly mixing letters and numbers.

Interesting that in aesthetics, an odd number is often more pleasing (like the number of flowers in a vase), whereas, according to my theory, an even number is more human because less machinelike, impersonal. Symmetry of odd numbers of objects is more aesthetically pleasing than that of even numbers (the latter is more 'square,' less round, less aesthetic, no?) Examples: 13531 vs. 24822842 (vs. 369363963 -- OR how about 24482448? So square! But more recognizable, more manageable in a business environment -- more 'human' for a clerk to utilize)

Is this interesting? Perhaps not. But I think so, vis-a-vis the dichotomies of utility vs. aesthetics, art vs. science, culture vs. business, etc.

I think the programs which create invoice numbers for Ikon must use numbers with patterns by some algorithm. 13909090. The patterns make it recognizable at a glance. There is some sophistication in that. Xerox's invoice numbers seem more purely random -- very inhuman.

For the scoffing skeptic: So what's a direct application of this kind of poetics of numbers? Music -- especially so-called "12-tone" or serial modern music (ie, Modern Music), a la Anton Webern...