David Beckham and Christiano Ronaldo have both worn the number seven football shirt

He added, "The results do not have the rigour of a professional opinion poll or a laboratory experiment. Yet even so it is revealing about our number choices."

Here are the top ten numbers with the highest votes:

7
3
8
4
5
13
9
6
2
11

Every number between 1 and 100 was chosen and 472 numbers between 1 and 1000 were chosen. The lowest number to receive no votes was 110.

Bellos wrote, "The humiliation of 110 is an example of the most striking pattern in the data, which is that round numbers are rarely chosen as favourite numbers. Numbers ending in 0 are particularly unloved, as are numbers ending in 5 (with the exception of 5 itself)."

(Words: Sejal Kapadia, Images: Rex Features)

What's the world's favourite number?