16 (number)

16 (sixteen) is the natural number following 15 and preceding 17. 16 is a composite number, and a square number, being 4² = 4 × 4. It is the smallest number with exactly five divisors, its proper divisors being 1, 2, 4 and 8.

In speech, the numbers 16 and 60 are often confused. When carefully enunciated, they differ in which syllable is stressed: 16 /sɪksˈtiːn/ vs 60 /ˈsɪksti/. However, in dates such as 1666 or when contrasting numbers in the teens, such as 15, 16, 17, the stress shifts to the first syllable: 16 /ˈsɪkstiːn/.

Sixteen is the fourth power of two. For this reason, 16 was used in weighing light objects in several cultures. The British have 16 ounces in one pound; the Chinese used to have 16 liangs in one jin. In old days, weighing was done with a beam balance to make equal splits. It would be easier to split a heap of grains into sixteen equal parts through successive divisions than to split into ten parts. Chinese Taoists did finger computation on the trigrams and hexagrams by counting the finger tips and joints of the fingers with the tip of the thumb. Each hand can count up to 16 in such manner. The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5s and 5 lower beads to represent the 1s, the 7 beads can represent a hexadecimal digit from 0 to 15 in each column.

Number (magazine)

Number is the leading Japanese sports magazine published on every Thursday by Bungeishunju. The official name is Sports Graphic Number. Though the circulation once hit 47 million, it is now around 10 million.

The first issue, released in April 1980, drew attention by the piece Enatsu's 21 balls (江夏の21球, Enatsu no 21 kyu). Yet the magazine failed to return a profit for the next 10 years. Today however, the magazine is one of the most profitable publications of Bungeishunju. The success of the magazine also led other rival publishers to launch sports magazines, though they tend to be less successful.

References

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two", or "three or more"). In many languages, including English, the number categories are singular and plural. Some languages also have a dual number or other arrangements.

The count distinctions typically, but not always, correspond to the actual count of the referents of the marked noun or pronoun.

The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see "Grammatical aspect".

Overview

Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. One widespread distinction, found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car/cars, child/children, etc.). Discussion of other more elaborate systems of number appears below.

Personal Communications Services area codes

Area codes 500, 533, 544, 566 and 577 are non-geographic area codes reserved for personal communications services. The 500 code was authorized by the United States Federal Communications Commission, and introduced into the North American Numbering Plan in 1995.

In 1995 AT&T introduced a "follow-me" service under the brand name of AT&T True Connections using the 500 area code. It was designed to replace the AT&T EasyReach 700 service. Other local exchange carriers and interexchange carriers introduced similar competitive services.

AT&T True Connections service was not well received. Companies, hotels, and others with PBX equipment continued to block the dialing of 500 because it was a caller-paid number. Phone-sex services also began using the 500 prefix and forwarding the calls to various foreign countries.

The 500 prefix is still registered to a variety of phone companies, and is being used for non-geographic services including dial-up modem access.