Author William S. Burroughs believed that, for whatever reason, the number 23 seemed to pop up more often than it should. This belief has been perpetuated now by many authors, and is termed the '23 Enigma', even supplying the plot for a movie. In actual fact, this is an example of 'apophenia': the tendency to witness patterns emerging when there are, in reality, none. Apophenia is the basis for a number of related phenomena, such as gambling addictions and belief in the supernatural (though some would argue otherwise for that one). Even computers are not immune, and can fit a patter to random data. This is known as 'overfitting'.
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