5863
You can’t spell gravity without gravy.
Homer Simpson
I decided to pick a number at random and research it. 5863 was the lucky winner. Is there anything special about this number, or is it just a number? Let’s find out.
I quickly found that metanumbers.com has a lot of information about 5863. Everything you would ever want to know, and a lot more. Does any of that information make the number special? No, the same information can be displayed for any other number you might wish to search.
I did find one interesting table, and it had nothing to do with 5863 specifically. The table shows how the number translates into other bases. There is, of course, Base 2 (1011011100111), Base 6 (43051), and so on. The last line of the table caught my attention. It never occurred to me that anyone would, or could, translate a number into Base 36. I have never seen such a thing before. Just so you know, 5863 in Base 36 is “4iv.” I doubt that will ever come up in conversation, but if it does…
After I saw the Base 36 row in the table, I wondered why it was there. After a bit of time, it dawned on me that we have 10 fingers and 26 letters in our alphabet. Ha! There you have it. That is why we have a base 36 available if we ever need it. As for me, I guess I could use it in a story about Piper Pandora Pennington. I am sure she knew about Base 36 long before I did.
During my research, I came across a play written by Rudi Stroebel called “5863.” The title refers to a prison number assigned to an incarcerated man. The playwright said that the number 5863 was chosen randomly, even though that might not be the case. It is not that I don’t believe him; it’s just that I know secret messages can easily be encoded in things like the titles of plays and headings of posts. Just as you can’t spell gravity without gravy, sometimes a random number is just that, and sometimes it isn’t. Just as there is nothing profound in Homer’s little quip, sometimes a random number is just that, and sometimes it isn’t. And sometimes a short post is just that, no hidden messages implied, and sometimes it isn’t.
