Threeandtwentyism Takes Shape

I have been looking out for the number 23 all weekend.  This is because there are exactly 23 ties in the Second Qualifying Round of the FA Cup next Saturday at grounds I need to visit.  My blogpost about one of them will be published on the 23rd of September.  As I said before, I don't actually believe any of this numerology nonsense.  They are just numbers, and it is fun to play with them.   

I have associated each match with a letter of the alphabet by choosing the 23 most common letters in the English language (both in words in general and for the initial letters of words).  Therefore Q, X and Z are omitted.  This means I can associate each match with the surname of people that can share or exhibit 23ness in their lives this week.  Or threeandtwentyism, a new word I have just invented.

The search for links will end at 23:23 BST this evening, and then a significance test will be employed to make the final pseudorandom and not-at-all-scientific-but-dressed-up-like-it decision.

1	Ashton United	v	Marine	A
2	Bamber Bridge	v	Guiseley AFC	B
3	Bishop Auckland	v	AFC Fylde	C
4	Buckland	v	Bath City	D
5	Carlton	v	New Mills	E
6	Chorley	v	Frickley Athletic	F
7	Dereham Town	v	Chasetown	G
8	Fareham Town	v	Blackfield & Langley	H
9	Frome Town	v	Weston Super Mare	I
10	Gillingham Town	v	Sholing	J
11	Gosport Borough	v	Bideford	K
12	Grays Athletic	v	Maidstone United	L
13	Merthyr	v	Hungerford Town	M
14	Newport (IoW)	v	Salisbury City	N
15	Nuneaton Griff	v	Hednesford Town	O
16	Salford City	v	FC United Of Manchester	P
17	Shildon	v	Altrincham	R
18	South Park	v	Harefield United	S
19	Tadcaster Albion	v	Skelmersdale United	T
20	Trafford	v	Spennymoor Town	U
21	West Auckland Town	v	Harrogate Town	V
22	Whitby Town	v	Droylsden	W
23	Yate Town	v	Oxford City	Y

Recap: What I know so far about the number 23 ...

1  It's a prime number - it has no factors other than itself and 1.

2  It is the minimum number of people that you need in a group before there is a better than even chance (50.7%, to one decimal place) that two or more of them will share the same birthday.  In the particular case of classes in school, where everyone is in the same "year group" it is the minimum number you need to have to have a better than even chance that two or more pupils in the class were born on the same day.

3  There is a film called "The Number 23" starring Jim Carrey and Virgina Madsen, directed by Joel Schumacher.  Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, who is a man obsessed with the number 23 and ends up after a lot of 23ness discovering chapter 23 of a book he had written and forgotten behind the wallpaper of room 23 in a hotel.

4  The "23 enigma", the belief that everything is somehow connected to the number 23, has been attributed to author William Burroughs.  He claimed to know a ship's captain called Clark who had his first accident in 23 years on the same day that an aircraft, flight number 23 and also captained by a man called Clark, crashed.  Throbbing Gristle wrote a song about it.  Burroughs himself wrote a short story called "23 Skidoo" - the phrase means something like "time to go while the going is good" but there are many conflicting stories about how the phrase originated.

5  The 23rd ground on my lifetime groundhopper chronological list was The Valley, where I saw Charlton Athletic beat West Brom 2-1 in January 1994.

Here is the summary of the "research" SO FAR - combining the themes of football, travel and groundhopping with friends' suggestions and personal links.  The term "research" could be replaced by "complete and utter waste of a day in a human life" but you should be expecting this kind of stuff by now.  The numbers on the right are the total number of links I have been able make with the number 23  for each letter.  There may well be others before tonight's deadline ... however, the final choice may not be as simple as which letter gets the most, because as things stand the rank order depends mainly on the distribution of first letters in English surnames.  Therefore, I am devising a simple significance test that will demonstrate whether the score of 16 for South Park is more significant than the score of 7 for Ashton United.

(The table that appeared in the first version of this post was updated and appears again in the next post ...)