Showing posts with label random. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random. Show all posts

Monday, November 10, 2008

Three-teen? Five-teen?

Why do the numbers '3' and '5' break all of the rules? Counting from 13 to 19 out loud, you say four-teen, six-teen, seven-teen, eight-teen, nine-teen...but not three-teen or five-teen. Why is that?

2, 3 and 5 break the rules when counting by 10's. Ten, Two-ty, Three-ty, Four-ty, Five-ty, Six-ty, Seven-ty, Eight-ty, Nine-ty (One Hundred-ty...wait...no, that's another thing entirely). Why do the other numbers work and 2, 3 and 5 don't?

I'm sure I could find some answers if I wanted to search the web (I'm trying to not use 'Google' as a verb anymore...I just decided that now), but I'm just not motivated enough to do so =)