Talk:4/Archive 1

Explanation for Line-Removal
I removed the line


 * In binary system four is 100.

because it duplicates what is already stated in the Docuan table. PrimeFan 19:30, 8 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I added 100 mostly because 100 (one hundred) is such a great number :) so it was mostly for fun, if you think it is redundant and meaningless, let it be so. Maximaximax

Another line removal
I removed the line:

Four is a commune of the Isère département, in France

because I don't see what this has to do with the number 4 at all.

Four has no connotation of the number 4 in French. I suppose if there were somewhere in some French speaking place named Quatre, it would merit mention in the French wikipedia's article on 4. I looked at the French wikipedia article and although they did translate the interesting observation that 4 is the only number which has the same number of letters in its English spelling as its value as:

Quatre (four) est le seul nombre anglais qui, lorsqu'on l'épelle, possède le même nombre de lettres que ce qu'il nomme.

I don't see this a justifying a connection between the French commune and the number 4.

--Rick 14:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The only possible justification I can think of is that maybe some French youngsters might use the number 4 as a shorthand for the town, but this would probably be so confusing as to be useless. So I agree with your edit. PrimeFan 15:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

4 variants
The Ezh article talks about a picture of a 3 variant that differs from the common 3 variant in that it has a pointed top instead of a rounded top. I added it to 3 (number) just a while ago. Now, does any Wikipedia article talk about a 4 variant in a similar way?? The two 4 variants are the horizontal line variant and the diagonal line variant, classifiying the line that starts at the left of the horizontal line?? Georgia guy 01:16, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Base 4 uses
Wikipedia is written in base 4!!!! not base 2!! Observe my 64 tildes: 07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)69.143.236.33 07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Look Ma
Wikipedia=0mod4, neat! 69.143.236.33 07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

4 logos
How many different 4 logos have been used in American television?? There's the Arrow 4 logo and the Sailboat 4 logo, and what else?? Georgia guy 00:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh! Also the Olympic rings!!!69.143.236.33 17:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Did you know
Four is the only written number in the english language that use the exactly the same amount of letters as the number its spells out.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Flying V 666 Clampshell (talk • contribs).


 * Thanks for that insightful comment. Unfortunately, I already knew that.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by IanManka (talk • contribs).

That is pretty cool i think that should be mentioned some where in the article.... Tsar Clampshell 13:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You are incorrect. for uses only three letters —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.143.236.33 (talk) 17:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Etymogoly
Why is there no history of the spelling of "four" ? 80.193.130.5 (talk) 14:02, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

4
My favorite number. Four means many things. But why I like it the most, is the horsemen. Can't wait for these badasses to come and kill off the human parasite that plagues this worldFlynn M Taggart (talk) 13:11, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Some things on this page are getting overflowed...I might as well put there "4 is a Wikipedia username". 4 = 2 + 2 05:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Organization of number pages and number disambiguation pages
Dear Colleagues,

There is an ongoing discussion on the organization of number pages and number disambiguation pages.

Your comments would be much appreciated!! Please see and participate in:


 * Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Numbers

Thank you for your participation!

Cheers,

PolarYukon (talk) 15:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Unexplained, or ill-explained, mass deletion
I reverted User:Knodeltheory's deletion of 14KB and called it "unexplained" though I should have called it ill-explained. Knodeltheory cited POINTCRUFT which doesn't explain the deletion at all. The Tetrast (talk) 20:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC).

Arabic numeral
Do you know what I fucking don't like about this shitty page? The number 4 is written as an Arabic numeral. Why? That is so biased against other types of numbers and abstract concepts. Also, what if we were in base 2, there would be no 4. Does it really need its own page? --23:07, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Arabic numerals are whats used most extensively, there are articles on other numbering systems I believe.  Falcon8765  (T ALK ) 23:32, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

How many letters does the correct answer to this riddle contain?
Is it true that "four" is the only number for which the number of letters is itself (in English)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.73.53 (talk) 03:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Dead link
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.ngcic.org/
 * In IC 1337 on 2011-04-23 17:08:25, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'
 * In IC 1337 on 2011-04-24 04:34:10, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'
 * In 10 (number) on 2011-05-23 02:06:58, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'
 * In 10 (number) on 2011-05-31 22:27:07, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'
 * In 11 (number) on 2011-06-01 02:53:15, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'
 * In 138 (number) on 2011-06-01 14:55:19, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'
 * In 48 (number) on 2011-06-19 14:01:14, Socket Error: 'getaddrinfo failed'

--JeffGBot (talk) 14:10, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Topless four
I think it should be mentioned that four is sometimes written without a top, like in seven-segment displays. I don't know where this came from, but I write fours without a top, probably because I was taught that way. Is this specific to the United States? AntiNeo (talk) 22:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The way it's written in seven-segment displays is already mentioned in 4 (number). PrimeHunter (talk) 23:56, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess I wasn't very clear. I mean hand written without the top. I don't know anyone else who does that, so I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning, but it could be added to the bit about seven-segment displays that this style has found its way into writing.
 * I was also taught to make my 4s "topless" long before digital 4s existed. NightBear (talk) 15:37, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Fish?
Somebody seems to have inserted the word "fish" into everything in the table on the top right. Somebody might want to fix that. (edit) It was fixed while I wrote this. Nevermind. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.128.32.138 (talk) 16:35, 29 May 2013‎ (UTC)


 * Yup, beat you to it, but thanks anyway! Favonian (talk) 16:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:1 (number) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 04:43, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Four parts of a day
The article is claiming that there exist four parts of a day namely "dawn, morning, afternoon, night". What happened to dusk? What happened to evening? This particular division is rather arbitrary and not really logical. Firstly, it assumes that morning starts at sunrise, which is arbitrary since some would define it to start at midnight. Secondly, it counts dawn as a "part of the day" but doesn't mention dusk. You'd think that dusk and dawn would be on equal footing. So, five parts—dawn, morning, afternoon, dusk and night—would be more logical. But there's a third problem: dawn (and dusk) are very short, morning (so defined) and afternoon are of reasonable length (about a quarter of a day) and night is quite long (about the length of morning and afternoon combined). So the division is uneven. We could cut dawn out altogether and have three parts (still uneven though): morning, afternoon and night. We could even things up by combining morning and afternoon to get two parts to the day: day and night (though it's only really even at the equinox). We could cut the day up in the other direction: am and pm. We could cut the day in two and in two again in these two ways just mentioned and get morning (am & day), afternoon (pm & day), evening (pm & night) and the other quarter of the day (am & night) which doesn't really have a name (sometimes called "the wee hours"). If the day is to have four parts, this latter division seems to make most sense, only there really is no good name for the first quarter. On the other hand, you might define morning as the period from midnight to midday. This could lead you to a three-part day: morning, afternoon and evening. This could be extended to four parts by throwing in dusk and you'll have a system which makes as much sense as that which you started with. At the end of the day, though, (or at the beginning or middle for that matter) dividing the day up into parts is pretty arbitrary so it makes little sense to claim that there are this or that many parts and here they are. It's time to delete this line. J IM ptalk·cont 06:08, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

The 4 parts of the day are: pre-dawn 0:00-06:00, morning 06:00-12:00, afternoon 12:00-18:00, evening 18:00-24:00. 69.180.104.60 (talk) 14:08, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

opening paragraph
That four is the only number in English with the same amount of letters as its number seems really, very, trivial to mention in the opening of the article. Is there any justifiable significance to this statement? It seems like just an arbitrary factoid. I could come up with some similar facts.. One is the only number with the same amount of syllables as its pronunciation in english. How bout this: one, two, and three each have the same number of consonant letters spelled out as their corresponding number in English. Those are just two facts I thought of that have equal importance to the one stated in the opening of this article. That is, no importance. Dancindazed (talk) 06:21, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Wrong. Everything has meaning and the facts that you mentioned should be added to those articles. 69.180.104.60 (talk) 14:12, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Names of numbers
I think it would be good if Wikipedia could reveal (to whatever extent it can) the history of the number names. Please see a comment in a requested move section of Talk:1 (number) for details. The name four get special attention here because one of the steps it has gone through in becoming what it is is starting with the same sound as five. Georgia guy (talk) 12:16, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Good idea! 69.180.104.60 (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Worthless fact in introduction paragraph
The introduction paragraph should contain the most important facts about the topic, summarized for ease of reading and quick access. That "four" has four letters is a random coincidence of language development, and pretty much a meaningless bit of trivia. I like fun facts about words and numbers, but I don't think they should be right at the beginning of articles. 47.72.149.154 (talk) 10:31, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Wrong. There Are No Coincidences - there is synchronism, nonlocality, retrocausality, design-and-alignment (book title). Chaos theory states that "there is only an appearance of randomness in chaotic systems". 69.180.104.60 (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Relativity is 4 dimensional: 3D regular space + one-dimensional time
I tweaked... Special relativity and general relativity treat nature as four-dimensional: 3D regular space and one-dimensional time are treated together and called spacetime. 69.180.104.60 (talk) 14:21, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey Championships are best 4-of-7 games
I added... In American professional baseball, basketball, and hockey, the championships are determined by the team which wins 4 games of a possible 7 games series. 69.180.104.60 (talk) 14:45, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2 which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 03:31, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Retired jersey numbers
Per WP:PRESERVE, here is the list of retired #4 jersey numbers and F1 cars that were mentioned in the article:


 * The jersey number 4 has been retired by several North American teams in honor of past playing greats or other key figures:
 * In Major League Baseball:
 * The Baltimore Orioles, for Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver.
 * The Boston Red Sox, for Hall of Famer Joe Cronin.
 * The Chicago White Sox, for Hall of Famer Luke Appling.
 * The Los Angeles Dodgers, for Hall of Famer Duke Snider.
 * The Milwaukee Brewers, for Hall of Famer Paul Molitor.
 * The New York Giants, for Hall of Famer Mel Ott; the team has continued to honor the number in its current home of San Francisco.
 * The New York Yankees, for Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig. Notably, he was the first player in major North American sports to be so honored by a U.S.-based team (he was preceded in this honor by Ace Bailey, whose #6 was retired by the Toronto Maple Leafs five years earlier).
 * The Pittsburgh Pirates, for Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner.
 * In the NBA:
 * The Chicago Bulls, for Jerry Sloan, who later served as the team's head coach and went on to a Hall of Fame career in that role (mainly with the Utah Jazz).
 * The Detroit Pistons, for Hall of Fame player Joe Dumars, who later served as team president.
 * The Milwaukee Bucks, for Sidney Moncrief.
 * The New York Nets, for Wendell Ladner, who died in a 1975 plane crash.
 * The Sacramento Kings, for Chris Webber.
 * The Utah Jazz, for Hall of Fame player Adrian Dantley.
 * In the NHL:
 * The Boston Bruins, for Hall of Famer Bobby Orr.
 * The Montreal Canadiens, for Hall of Famer Jean Beliveau.
 * The New Jersey Devils, for Hall of Famer Scott Stevens.
 * The Philadelphia Flyers, for Barry Ashbee.
 * The Toronto Maple Leafs have a policy of not retiring numbers unless the player honoured either died or suffered a career-ending incident while a member of the team. Other players whose numbers would otherwise be retired instead have their numbers enshrined by the team as "Honoured Numbers", which remain in circulation for future players. The number 4 is currently honoured for Hall of Famer Red Kelly.
 * In the NFL:
 * The New York Giants, for Hall of Famer Tuffy Leemans.
 * The Green Bay Packers, for Hall of Famer Brett Favre.
 * The Oakland Raiders, for Derek Carr.
 * In F1:
 * Max Chilton uses the number 4 on his car.

This material may be of interest for a future List of retired numbers in sports article. — JFG talk 22:29, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Template:Superstitions ??
The template seems to have a very low bar for inclusion. I'm considering removing it from this page. Any comments? Power~enwiki (talk) 06:37, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. There is a separate article on (so-called) "tetraphobia", which is enough. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:45, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Bingo names -
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers for a centralized discusion as to whether Bingo names should be included in thiese articles. Arthur Rubin (alternate) (talk) 23:34, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Cross symbols
An editor recently added. I consider this inappropriate, and the reason he gave on his talk page is really inappropriate. However, it could be argued, so perhaps some discussion here is appropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:29, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Per the article on cross: "The cross sign occurs trivially in tally marks, and develops into a number symbol independently in the Roman numerals ( "ten"), the Chinese rod numerals (十 "ten") and the Brahmi numerals ("four", whence the numeral 4)."

This very article specifies that: "The Brahmin Indians simplified 4 by joining its four lines into a Shunga would add a horizontal line on top of the numeral, and the Kshatrapa and Pallava evolved the numeral to a point where the speed of writing was a secondary concern. The Arabs' 4 still had the early concept of the cross, but for the sake of efficiency, was made in one stroke by connecting the "western" end to the "northern" end; the "eastern" end was finished off with a curve. The Europeans dropped the finishing curve and gradually made the numeral less cursive, ending up with a glyph very close to the original Brahmin cross.

So it is a cross symbol, like the Roman "X". Dimadick (talk) 11:27, 14 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Doesn't seem an adequate explanation to me. — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 05:23, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

So you are ignoring article content in favor of your personal preferences? Dimadick (talk) 08:06, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

"➍" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect ➍. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. —&thinsp; J 947  (user &#124; cont &#124; ess), at 20:29, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Considering removal
I'm planning on removing this entry:

I looked for reliable sources and came up empty. Of course, if someone can come up with a solid source, it can simply be added, but I'm not convinced that this phrasing is ubiquitous enough to deserve entry.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  18:27, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, I'm struggling with this assertion:

It was added by an IP in 2005. While there's no doubt that 12 and 20 are divisible by four, that's not enough to say that the bases are "based on four". I've done some searching and found nothing that even hints that it could be correct. I plan to remove it if no one can find support.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  00:17, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I found support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean but not for Vietnamese. Unless someone can find a reliable source I plan to remove Vietnamese.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  02:01, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

This is roughly like saying that you can find the number 4 on the fourth page of printed books. A true statement, but not in the exactly an interesting property of the number-- S Philbrick (Talk)  10:24, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * All removed.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  19:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Roman numeral IIII
Is this covered anywhere?— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:24, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

rm "pointless book"
i removed


 * Four also give rise to arguably the most pointless book in the history of publishing, Norman L. De Forest's The Square Root of 4 to a Million Places.

cause I thought it was a pov (though one I agree with). I looked at the book in question, available for download. i can give you a good idea of its contents: after the legalese, it tells you the square root of 4, which is 2.000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 and so on. Numerao 19:48, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Claim of "base number"
I removed the following: "A circle divided by 4 makes right angles and four quadrants. Because of it, four is the base number of the plane (mathematics)."

The first part is not notable, since dividing a circle into n equal parts always makes(?) n sectors, and it is just that "quadrant" is a special word for a 90&deg; sector. The bit about "base number" is unclear, and unsourced. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:54, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Knuth's notation does not work this way
"Continuing the pattern in Knuth's up-arrow notation, 2 ↑↑ 2 = 2 ↑↑↑ 2 = 4, and so on, for any number of up arrows.[3]"

It's not very polite to put falsehoods in pages about numbers :( — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilari sahamies (talk • contribs) 13:20, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

}} 182.19.172.39 (talk) 08:19, 25 October 2021 (UTC) 4 is a common number that China hate, which represents die in China 'cause die in Chinese is si which is a very similar sound to 4, so be careful if you are there! The worse: Japan doesn't eat with 4 people, doesn't buy 4 things, doesn't eat in the forth floor etc with 4 24 can become nishi, aka double death (nishi ニ死にし) 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything!) can become shini, aka "death" or "to death" (shini 死しに) 43 can become shisan which sounds like shizan, aka stillbirth (shinzan 死産しさん) 45 can be shigo, or "after death" (shinzan 死後しご) 49 (though a bit of a stretch) can become shinu made kurushimu, aka "To suffer until death."

"−4" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect −4. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 31 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 13:36, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Seven Segment Display
I’d request that the edit I made in October be re-instated now that the bug has presumably been patched A. Rosenberg (talk) 19:39, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

"Open four"
The article suggests that the "open four" (below) is a product of calculators/televisions only. Is this really the case? I always thought of this as a fairly common alternative way of writing "4". McPhail (talk) 14:16, 16 May 2022 (UTC)



"꤄" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect ꤄ and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 July 4 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 22:58, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

The tomb of Jesus Ibn Maryam
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Jesus The four tombs in the Green Dome: Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Umar ibn Khattab and Isa ibn Maryam (Jesus) 197SHivan~ (talk) 10:05, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Adding a visual
I want to add a visual so that people can potentially have a better understanding of the topic of the article. Onlyinohio (talk) 18:40, 5 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Most readers will already know how many four is, but we already have an image of four mugs to help anyone who needs it. If we really need another image, the Commons category 4 (number) contains many good candidates. Certes (talk) 18:55, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
 * In the image of the four mugs, notice how one of them is empty. This could confuse readers that the amount of full mugs represents the number four, when in reality, there are three mugs that are full, not four. Onlyinohio (talk) 19:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
 * For complete clarity, we could replace the mugs by something bland like File:Cuatro Nahuatl.svg (Cuatro Nahuatl.svg). Certes (talk) 19:29, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think that it would take more from readers than it would give to replace the mugs with four circles, but the problem mentioned before still exists. Onlyinohio (talk) 19:44, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

In my opinion, this sounds like a good idea. Crp282932 (talk) 19:04, 5 December 2022 (UTC)