Strong Law of Small Numbers


In mathematics, the "Strong Law of Small Numbers" is the humorous law that proclaims, in the words of Richard K. Guy :
In other words, any given small number appears in far more contexts than may seem reasonable, leading to many apparently surprising coincidences in mathematics, simply because small numbers appear so often and yet are so few. Earlier this "law" was reported by Martin Gardner. Guy's paper gives 35 examples in support of this thesis. This can lead inexperienced mathematicians to conclude that these concepts are related, when in fact they are not.
Guy also formulated the Second Strong Law of Small Numbers:
Guy explains the latter law by the way of examples: he cites numerous sequences for which observing a subset of the first few members may lead to a wrong guess about the generating formula or law for the sequence. Many of the examples are the observations of other mathematicians.