i wonder what the relative frequencies of numbers are
like if you take a corpus of writing, and look for every instance of "one", "two", "three", and so on
which one would be most common?
I kinda wonder if it'd turn out like how "second street" is the most common street name
-F
@Felthry Doing a quick Google Ngrams and not sorting out which 'one' is used it looks like the order is almost numerical, each number more popular than its successor, with the exception that 'ten' is more popular than 'seven', 'eight', or 'nine'. 1, 2, and 3 are each about twice as popular as their successors; after that, it's more erratic, but averages at each number about 1.4 times as popular as the next one in line.
So, I did this search for the numbers one through ten. They came out mostly in order, but ten is slightly more common than nine.
@Felthry Without actually looking at data I'd expect a Benford's Law-type distribution, each number a roughly uniform multiple of its successor. Granting that 'one' would get a boost from its use as a pronoun.