156. Count on Me

Seven years ago, in May 2012, I posted “One Two Three”, in which I wrote about my Arithmomania.  It was Arithmomania then and it was Anatidaephobia in my last post.  I am a psychological mess!

Arithmomania: a morbid compulsion to count.  

I wrote at the time that I was unhappy with the word “morbid” in the definition as that means an “abnormal and unhealthy interest in something” and counting isn’t unhealthy.  It can be fun.

While surfing the internet I came across a site that’s new to me called “Infoplease” and saw that someone had asked the question, “How long would it take to count to a million?”

The answer to that question, began with this absurd statement:

Let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, that on average you could count one number every second.  

Then, it went on to say that counting at a rate of 60 numbers per minute, it would take roughly 11½ days to count to a million.

That opening statement is ridiculous because there comes a point relatively early when you just can’t count one number every second.  Eventually, the more you count, the numbers become too long and with too many syllables to say in just one second.

There are only ten one-syllable numbers and just twelve with two syllables.  Beyond a thousand, almost all numbers have at least seven syllables while most have eight or more: 100,001 has 7 syllables and 677,567 has 19.

Being alone all day, I’m able to do things I would be far too embarrassed to do in company.   For God’s sake, grow up! I’m trying to be serious here.

Out loud, I counted to 100 as fast as I could while still being intelligible, timing it with a stop watch.  It took me 40.89 seconds.  On a different website I read this be done in 25 seconds but in my opinion, that’s baloney.  The key word is “intelligible”.

It’s obvious when counting, that as the numbers increase they tend to contain more syllables and so take longer to say.  

The only person ever to have been recorded counting to a million and therefore the world record holder, is Jeremy Harper of Birmingham, Alabama in the USA.  In 2007, he counted for 16 hours every day taking 8 hours off for eating and sleeping.  It took him 89 days.  

That’s around 11,000 numbers a day or about 700 an hour.  Overall, he counted at a rate of 11.7 numbers per minute.  Counting at that rate, it would take him 243 years to count to a billion, defined these days as a thousand million.  In reality, it would take longer than that as you will see.

I don’t think most people realise how much bigger a billion is than a million.  Even if it really were possible to count at the rate of one number a second, it would take nearly 32 years to count to a billion.

In 2024, Elon Musk, cemented his position as the richest man in the world with cash and assets worth more than $486 billion.  That is more that the combined wealth of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerburg, the second and third richest people in the world. 

If Musk cashed in all his assets and collected the cash in 4.8 billion, $100 bills and then counted them at a steady rate of 200 bills an hour, it would take him more than 2,700 years of continuous counting (no toilet breaks) to make sure that it was all there.  

He might want to put all that money all into a nice, safe building society deposit account with no risk and so would have no financial worries ever again.  With only a 2.5% interest rate, he would receive about 12 billion dollars a year or $390 every second. 

But is he happy?

You might assume that if it took Jeremy Harper 89 days to count to a million, it would take 89,000 days, or 244 years, to count to a billion.  But, say 777,777,777 out loud.  That number has 35 syllables and when I say it aloud in a conversational way, it takes me just over six seconds.

I wanted to find out how “numbers per minute” decrease as the numbers get larger and take longer to say.  One morning, certain that I was alone and no one could see or hear me, I locked the doors and spent four hours counting out loud.  Putting it another way, I spent four hours talking to myself.  

I tried to imagine that I had at least 8 hours counting ahead of me and I would be doing the same thing tomorrow and for many days to come.  Consequently, my counting was steady and relentless.  

(Don’t you wish you could have been there?)

With a time scale of hundreds of years, the first ten thousand numbers are irrelevant.  They could be said in one day.

From  10,000 to 100,000 I averaged 27.3 numbers per minute (n.p.m.).

100,000 to 1,000,000 - my average n.p.m. is 11.2

1,000,000 to 5,000,000 - my average n.p.m. is 6.9

5,000,000 to 1 billion - my average n.p.m. is 6.1

The following table shows that it would me 294 years to count to a billion.  Someone else might do it faster or slower than me.

Range	Numbers	n.p.m	Hours	Years
10,000 - 100,000	90000	27.3	55	< 1
100,000 - 1,000,000	900000	11.2	1339	< 1
1,000,000 - 500,000,000	499000000	6.9	1205314	138
500,000,000 - 1 Billion	500000000	6.1	1366120	156
			Total	Years:  294

That’s 294 years of non-stop counting but if I were to copy Jeremy Harper’s practice of only counting for 16 hours a day, it would take me 392 years.  

It would actually take me longer than that as I would only be prepared to count for 8 hours a day (I do have some kind of life, you know) and so counting to one billion would take me at least 490 years.  

However, on a matter of principle, I absolutely refuse to count at the weekends or on Bank Holidays.  Also, I insist on having four weeks holiday every year.  That means I will only be counting for 233 days a year.

As there's no rush, I’ll probably start some time after Christmas, maybe on January 3rd.  Then, the day I shout out, “One billion!” will be on September 22nd 2788 and that’s a Thursday, 769 years from now.

If you’d like to see Jeremy Harper finish his count to a billion, click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aqCC2PVNcA

77. One Two Three........

I have a mental disorder.  You may have suspected it for some time but last Saturday, Caroline confirmed it for me and even went as far as to tell me what it is.  Apparently I suffer from arithmomania.

Unwilling to take her word for it, I looked it up.  It seems that she thinks that I have a “morbid compulsion to count”.  “Morbid” seems a bit strong though.  It means an abnormal and unhealthy interest in something.  
Counting isn’t unhealthy.  It can be fun.  But Caroline may be right.  Suddenly much of my life makes more sense than it did. 

When I was thirteen I found a game to play that made car journeys and even just walking down the street, much more interesting.

In Corton Road, around the corner from where we lived in Lowestoft, was a parked car.  Its registration number was ERH 1. One day, just after I had cycled past it on my way to the beach, I was overtaken by DEX 2.  From that moment I was on the lookout for a ‘3’ and then, once I had seen that, a ‘4’.  
These numbers had to be seen in the right order and it was extremely frustrating for example to see a 145 when I needed 144.

Five years later when I left school to go to Durham University, I was on 768.  University life was too distracting and I eventually stopped somewhere in the 790s.  Anyway, I had lost heart a year earlier when my father had got rid of his car with the plate WMJ 905.  Despite my pleading with him to hang on to it for a bit longer, he sold it.

I played cricket for more than 40 years and during many of those games I fielded at slip.  Between overs, I had to walk the 22 yards between the two sets of stumps and I eventually learnt to automatically lengthen my stride so that I covered those 22 yards in 22 paces.  Obviously, as I made those 22 paces I counted them in my head every time and that could have been as many as 65 times a game.

Did you know that in Tesco stores the wine, beers and spirits are kept as far from the door as is possible in order to make it difficult for shoplifters?  I was told this while having a conversation with a manager in the nearest Tesco to us which is so huge that I think that it possibly covers at least two different postcodes.  When I told him that it took me 243 steps to get to the non-alcoholic lager section, he looked at me with some surprise. 

“You count them?”

“Of course.”

I had to go to Guys Hospital a number of times last year.  I discovered that if I went from Winchmore Hill to London Bridge station via Highbury, I had to climb 128 steps on the stairways, whereas if I changed at Moorgate I only had to climb 97 and so that was the route I took even though it was longer.

Last December, Caroline and I were with friends in their house.  During the evening, their daughter Skyped them from America where she is studying at university.  I couldn’t avoid listening to the entire conversation.

“How are you?” her Dad asked.

“I’m like so stressed at the moment. Like everything’s happening like all at once.”

I listened in awe as she used the word “like” 32 times in an 8 minute 25 second conversation during which her father had spoken for almost half the time.  That number includes the one time that she used the word correctly when she said, “It’s yellow but not like a taxi.”

If you have read Amazingl“ posted on October last year you will know that for several weeks I was hooked on counting the number of times that the four judges on The X Factor used the word “amazing” in their descriptions of the acts.  I would record the show and then fast forward through the music and only listen to the comments.  It seemed very important at the time.

Caroline made her accusatory statement when I told her on Saturday evening that I had seen Jessica Ennis’s navel for the 500^th time since August 2009.  I first became aware of it on August 15^th 2009 at the World Athletics Championships held in Berlin.

I became interested when the cameraman made it the focus of attention for a few seconds by filling the entire television screen with her abdomen.  Earlier that day, I had seen a photograph of Jessica Ennis and her navel in The Times in a preview of the Games.  So that made it two in one day and counting!

The rules I set myself were strict.  I never sought sightings.  Looking for them on Google would not be not allowed.  The next day, even though she featured in many TV shots over several hours, I only allowed myself to count them all as one sighting but I made several more from photographs in the newspaper and on the BBC website.  Last Saturday morning the total stood at 499.

I was looking at the ‘Weekend’ section of The Times on Saturday - not the most obvious place for a navel seeker - when I turned to page 8 and there it was: a huge photograph of Ms Ennis and her navel accompanying an article on diet.

I had initially set myself a target of 1000 but that seems unlikely to be achieved now and so I am stopping at 500.

What shall I count next?