4 is the Magic Number

My stepdaughter came up to me and said, "Give me a number." I said, okay, 7. She said 7 is 5, 5 is 4, and 4 is the magic number. Say what?

She said give me another number. I said 10. She said 10 is 3, 3 is 5, 5 is 4, and 4 is the magic number.

My mind took the bait and I was off to the races in problem solving mode.

Numbers. Since I have used math most of my career, my mind was programmed to think in terms of numbers. What was this riddle 4 is the magic number? Do I add the numbers together and then divide by something and then subtract by something else?

Any number I would give her, she would think momentarily and then rattle off a chain of seemingly random numbers that culminated in the phrase "and 4 is the magic number." My brain kicked into overdrive, but I was not able to solve this riddle.

Seeing my dismay, she then gave me an invaluable hint about the riddle. She said that it had nothing to do with math. Say what?

Okay. Back up the truck and dump out the garbage cluttering my mind. Suddenly, the answer to the riddle popped into my head. With math out of the equation, I quickly formulated that if I counted the letters in the word that represents the number, I came up with the answer to the riddle.

For example, the number 7 is spelled s-e-v-e-n. That's 5 letters. The number 5 is spelled f-i-v-e. That's 4 letters... and 4 is the magic number.

Light bulb.

What if people with opposing views could find common ground by figuring out that what they were trying to communicate to one another was not getting through because of the way they were approaching the problem? In other words, what if math had nothing to do with it?

Just look at the way our government approaches problems like out of control spending and you'll see that...

...math definitely has nothing to do with it...