Seven

Seven (7) is the natural number following six and preceding eight.

Seven is the fourth-smallest prime number; the next is eleven. Seven is a Mersenne prime. This is because 2³-1=7, and seven is a prime number.

7 goes into 999,999 exactly 142,857 times, so fractions with 7 in the denominator have six-digit repeating sequences in their decimal expansions. 1/7=0.142857142...

A seven-sided polygon is a heptagon. The regular n-gons for n ≤ 6 can be constructed by ruler and compass alone, but the regular heptagon cannot.

There are seven of musicians in a septet and seven babies born in a set of septuplets. The most famous set of septuplets are the McCaughey Septuplets, who was born in 1997.

The British fifty-pence coin is a heptagon, with the sides curved to give it a constant radius.

Cities constructed amidst seven hills include:

• Rome
• Cincinnati
• Pretoria

Seven is also:

• the traditional number of Wonders of the Ancient World.
• viewed as a lucky number in many Western cultures, and in Japanese culture. In Western cultures it is considered lucky because the numbers three and four added together equal 7. Those two numbers are lucky as well, with 7 being extra lucky.
• the number of days in a week.
• a highly symbolic number in Christian thought (being the number of days in which God created the earth, etc)
• referred to in bingo as 'Lucky Seven'.
• the number of the Deadly Sins: lust, avarice, envy, pride, sloth, gluttony and anger.
• considered the usual number for a witches' coven.
• the neutral pH level.
• the number of palms in an Egyptian Sacred Cubit.
• the number of the ages of man into which William Shakespeare divided a lifetime.
• the name of one of the monsters in the cartoon television show Seven Little Monsters.
• the figurative number of seas.
• the number of candles in the Jewish menorah.
• the number of colors of the rainbow.
• the number of basic principles of the bushido.
• the number of heads of the beast, and of some other monsters, like the hydra.
• the number of frieze groups, the groupss consisting of symmetries of the plane whose group of translationss is isomorphic to the group of integers

and occurs in the names of:

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a book written by T. E. Lawrence.
• the film Seven (or Se7en), directed in 1995 by David Fincher and starring Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey.
• Several groupings called the Seven Sisters.
• Seven Sisters, a 1998 song album by pop singer Meja.
• the crewmember, Seven of Nine, in the Star Trek universe.

---

See also: five, six, seven, eight, nine, integer, list of numbers.

This article is about the number. For the year AD 7, see 7.