Today's Number is 5

This is a remarkably informative website, Numbers: Facts, Figures, and Fiction, by Richard Phillips that tells all about the number of the day's date. The breadth and depth of the information included with each number is stunning and quite amazing in some instances. Just click on a number when you get to the web-site and it will tell you all about it.

For some reason I only go to the number that is today's date; it would seem like cheating to go to another number! For example, apart from being a prime number and a fibonnaci number did you know, for example, that 5 was the lucky number of superstitious French fashion designed Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel who, in 1921, chose the fifth day of the fifth month to introduce her new brand of perfume called Chanel No. 5. 

5 also occurs in nature all over the place, in addition to the 5 digits we have on each hand or foot, such as in petals on many flowers and the 5-pointed star in the middle of an apple cut the "wrong" way.

When children learn to count, develop a sense of numeracy and the cardinality of number we can begin to embellish their basic understanding and knowledge of numbers by looking at the way each number relates to our lives. This brings numbers to life by giving them meaning, magnitude, and an individual identity that lifts them out of the sequence in which they always seem to exist.  5 becomes 5 for its own sake and not simply because it separates 4 and 6  or comes after one and before the other. It takes on a scientific, historical,   social or geographic quality that makes it so wonderfully interesting.