So I open up my Firefox browser and decide to go to http://www.fivethirtyeight.com to satisfy my obsession with the recent U.S. election. I finish typing “five” and the address bar automatically shows me that fivethirtyeight is a likely destination in a drop-down box. I try to hit down and enter, but miss the down key, hitting enter instead.

This causes Firefox to do an “I’m feeling lucky” search for “five”, which lands me right here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_(number)

That’s right, it’s an entire article about the number five. Wikipedia has an entire article just on the number five. The article helpfully starts by telling me that five “is the natural number following 4 and preceding 6.”

This article talks about how five is represented in other numbering systems, places you can find five in science, in religion, and in sports. Muslims pray to Allah five times a day. Take Five is a famous jazz standard composed by Paul Desmond. Five is the number of kyu grades in judo. 5 is the most common number of gears for automobiles with manual transmission.

I read this entire page, somehow unable to turn away from the utterly random collection of five-related trivia. When I reached the bottom of the page I saw something that disturbed me greatly. “Categories: Integers”. I almost couldn’t believe myself as I moved my mouse cursor to the link and clicked it. I was brought to, sure enough, a list of articles on Wikipedia about integers.

There are articles about -1, 4, 8, 14, 26, 109, 143, 171, 277, and many, many others. Every number between 1 and 20 seems represented, as does every number from 100 to 200.

Did you know that 163 is a Heegner number? Or that 17 is the third Fermat prime? Or that The number 1289 is called an apocalyptic power because 2^1289 contains the consecutive digits 666? Because Wikipedia Does.

And now I do too. Do you have any idea how impossible it is for a geek like me to come across a treasure trove of worthless information about numbers? I’m going to lose at least four hours of my life reading this crap, and if you’re a nerd like me, so will you.

Why the hell does Wikipedia have more information on the number 5 than it does on Walter Chrystler? (Side note: my effort to find a Wikipedia article about a noteworthy person of history with a shorter article than the one written for the number five lead me to the Chrystler article, which in turn cost me another four hours).

The best parts of these integer pages are the page history lists, which contain things like “removed, trivial”. You think so?

This reminds me of the time I accidentally came across Wookieepedia and lost nearly a day of my life to reading about the Star Wars expanded universe. Did you know that Soara Antana was one of Anakin’s lightsaber instructors prior to the Clone Wars? Because I do, and I never wanted to!

I can’t decide if the article on the number of five makes me hate wikipedia or love it. On the one hand, if you were to print the entire list of numerology articles on Wikipedia I’m sure it would take up more volume than the Encylopedia Britannica, which seems exceedingly pointless. On the other hand, fuck Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia just told me that the 150th Psalm in the Bible is the one most often set to music.