Still Life with Robin: Fun with 2021

by Peggy Robin

We’re all hoping that 2021 will be a year of good fortune….or at least better fortune than 2020. (Hard to see how it could be worse!) A little numerological fun is a good way to start off.

First, let’s add up the digits of 2021: 2 + 0 + 2 + 1 = 5. A prime number. That’s always a good sign. It means the year is a whole, unique thing, not broken up into a bunch of odd factors.

We can also add the two components of 2021 together, like this: 20 + 21 = 41. Another prime number. That’s even better!

Next, we can write out the prime factors of 20 and 21, like this: 2 x 2 x 5 and 3 x 7. Then let’s add them all together: 2+2+5+3+7 = 19. Yet another prime number. This year is triply prime!

But what about the 4-digit figure itself? 2021 is not a prime number. But it has just three prime factors: 1, 43, and 47. If you add those three together, 1 + 43 + 47, you get 91. That’s not a prime number, either. It factors out to 7 x 13. But then if you add those two prime factors together…. 7 + 13 = 20….and that’s the first half of 2021!

Now let’s look at the back half of 2021, that is, 21. We'll add the digits together, 2 + 1 = 3. Prime number. Now let’s take the prime factors of 21, which are 3 and 7.... Add the 3 and the 7 together and you get 10. Now let's go back to the first 3 (which we got by taking 21 and adding the digits together) and we'll add it to the 10, and that makes 13, yet another prime number. 

Now let’s go back to the 10 and divide it into its prime factors, 2 and 5. We'll add them together to get 7.

Now we take the 7 and the 13….and what do you know? Those are the factors of 91 ….which is 2021 split into its prime factors (1, 43, and 47) and then added together, remember!

Isn’t that amazing?!!

Now what does that tell us about the year to come?

I don’t know! I haven’t got that far in my numerology studies.

We’ll just have to wait and see…..

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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.

Coming next Saturday….. a look at the year’s notable anniversaries, the astronomical events (blue moons, eclipses, and the like), the palindrome dates, and the Friday the Thirteenths.