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eric-brechemier / how-i-replaced-skype-with-twilio

How I replaced Skype with Twilio to make phone calls from my computer
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Choose my new mobile phone number on Twilio #3

Closed eric-brechemier closed 5 years ago

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

I want my mobile phone number to be memorable because:

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

It is rare today to have to memorize a phone number. As a kid, growing up in the 1980s, I knew a few numbers by heart: my best friends, my dad's work, my home. All landlines of course, since no-one had mobile phones at the time. And having built such a strong association with these numbers, I still remember them to this date, even though I have not used most of them for over 20 years. People moved to different places but the numbers remained in my memory.

It was not that hard, though. First, the numbers were shorter at the time, only 7 digits vs 10 digits today. Second, the first 3 digits were identical for all numbers in the area, and thus only the last 4 digits differed. In the end, all that I had to remember were 3 chunks: the city on 3 digits followed with two chunks of 2 digits each that were associated with a specific person in my memory.

This process is called chunking, and you can read more about it here:

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

According to research on the psychology of numbers by Marisca Milikowski & Jan J. Elshout in the 1990s, the memorability of numbers is related to how we feel about numbers, how likeable they are, and the familiarity that we gain through everyday experience and education.

That means that the single digits, from 1 to 9, and more generally small numbers from 1 to 19, being the most familiar, are the easiest to remember. Next come the 2-digit numbers made from 2 identical digits (22, 33, ...) and numbers learned by rote in multiplication tables.

Most people have no particular familiarity with numbers larger than 100, and as a consequence, numbers of 3 digits or more are much harder to memorize unless they have a specific semantic association, like a year.

More recently, Robbie Gonzalez from Wired asked Marisca Milikowski how this research can apply to the memorization of larger numbers, namely 6-digit authentication codes. Lacking specific studies, they hypothesized that various patterns help to build larger chunks from the 1 and 2 digit numbers by:

We can further generalize to:

References

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

In the Twilio dashboard, go to the Phone Numbers section, then click the button to buy a new number. You can also navigate directly to the subsection Buy a Number.

twilio-buy-a-number
eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

You need to "Show Advanced Search" to restrict the search to Mobile phones. I also selected Voice and SMS capabilities to make sure that I can both call and text using this number:

twilio-number-type-and-capabilities
eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

Twilio supports two different wildcards, * and %, to replace one or multiple digits respectively:

Use * to match any character. Use % to match 0, 1, or more characters.

This can be used with profit to search for memorable patterns in the number.

Note that the wildcard which matches a single digit is `(and not the usual?`).*

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

I started by exploring which prefixes are available, thus examining digits at the start of the number.

The first digit for a French mobile phone number is either 6 or 7. I tried these two digits first:

Prefix Results
6 Yes
7 No

Starting with a 6, I then tried each digit in the second position in turn and noted which search returned any results:

Prefix Results
60 No
61 No
62 No
63 No
64 Yes
65 No
66 No
67 No
68 No
69 No

This search can be done quickly by changing just the last digit in the search input above the results and clicking "Search" or just pressing enter to run the new search.

From the above, we see that all available numbers start with +33 64.

We can now extend the search to identity the only third digit available:

Prefix Results
640 No
641 No
642 No
643 No
644 Yes
645 No
646 No
647 No
648 No
649 No

The fourth digit:

Prefix Results
6440 No
6441 No
6442 No
6443 No
6444 No
6445 No
6446 Yes
6447 No
6448 No
6449 No

The fifth digit:

Prefix Results
64460 Yes
64461 No
64462 No
64463 No
64464 No
64465 No
64466 No
64467 No
64468 No
64469 No

And the digits available in sixth position:

Prefix Results
644600 No
644601 Limited
644602 Yes
644603 Limited
644604 No
644605 Limited
644606 No
644607 No
644608 No
644609 No

Note: there are at most 10 numbers displayed in the results for a matching prefix. When less than 10 numbers are displayed, we know that the search is limited to the results displayed.

When a prefix returns only limited results, you can check these numbers one by one, looking for memorable patterns and stop there if you find a number that you fancy. Or you can continue to explore with the next digit, for prefixes with a larger selection of results:

Prefix Results
6446020 No
6446021 Limited
6446022 No
6446023 Limited
6446024 No
6446025 Limited
6446026 Limited
6446027 Limited
6446028 Limited
6446029 Yes

As long as you only have a few prefixes with more than 10 results, here only 6446029, it is worth exploring an extra digit to weigh your options:

Prefix Results
64460290 Limited
64460291 Limited
64460292 Limited
64460293 Limited
64460294 Limited
64460295 Limited
64460296 Limited
64460297 No
64460298 Limited
64460299 Limited

In this case, we have reached the end of the exploration. This is the list of prefixes currently available for French mobile phone numbers, with a limited selection of numbers in each:

It is rather uncommon in my experience to exhaust all the search options in such a pool of numbers. Usually, the search branches out much more, with several digits to explore at each step.

French mobile phone numbers were actually unavailable on Twilio for several months before making their return in May 2019, and this scarcity may explain why the pool of newly introduced numbers is still limited at the moment.

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

We shall first consider the most traditional chunking of mobile phone numbers.

In France, local numbers start with 0 followed by 9 digits for all numbers. Local numbers are usually written as 0# ## ## ## ## (5 groups of 2 digits).

Applied to the above list of prefixes, this gives the following chunks:

Prefix French Format
644601 06 44 60 1…
6446021 06 44 60 21 …
6446023 06 44 60 23 …
6446025 06 44 60 25 …
6446026 06 44 60 26 …
6446027 06 44 60 27 …
6446028 06 44 60 28 …
64460290 06 44 60 29 0…
64460291 06 44 60 29 1…
64460292 06 44 60 29 2…
64460293 06 44 60 29 3…
64460294 06 44 60 29 4…
64460295 06 44 60 29 5…
64460296 06 44 60 29 6…
64460298 06 44 60 29 8…
64460299 06 44 60 29 9…
644603 06 44 60 3…
644605 06 44 60 5…

Using the French format, the following 2-digit chunks appear:

We can use the categories of numbers introduced by Marisca Milikowski & Jan J. Elshout in What makes a number easy to remember? to classify these numbers:

then order by memorability:

With this knowledge, the most promising prefixes in our list are:

while the others contain less memorable chunks with non-tabled numbers:

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

Starting from the most promising prefixes, we can now introduce wildcards * (single digit) and % (0, 1 or more digits) to help us in building memorable patterns.

For example, starting with the prefix 06 44 60 5… we can look for:

We can also look for meaningful chunks with 4 digits such as a year: 19**, 20**.

I generalized these ideas to produce the search patterns below:

Prefix Results
6 44 60 ** 0* Limited
6 44 60 *0 *0 Limited
6 44 60 ** 11 No
6 44 60 ** 22 No
6 44 60 ** 33 Limited
6 44 60 ** 44 Limited
6 44 60 ** 55 Limited
6 44 60 ** 66 Limited
6 44 60 ** 77 Limited
6 44 60 ** 88 Limited
6 44 60 ** 99 No
6 44 60 11 ** No
6 44 60 22 ** No
6 44 60 33 ** No
6 44 60 55 ** No
6 44 60 ** 60 No
6 44 60 ** 24 Limited
6 44 60 ** 36 Limited
6 44 60 ** 54 No
6 44 60 19 ** Limited
6 44 60 20 ** No

Note that I favored the use of the wildcard * (single digit) here instead of % (0, 1 or more digits) to control the size and the position of the memorable chunks in the matching numbers.

At this point, each search is pretty specific and thus usually returns only a limited list of results, even in a large pool of numbers. And we get a high proportion of memorable numbers in these short lists of results. With lots of good options coming up, you can evaluate each one in turn and choose the one that is the most memorable and evocative for you.

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

For reference, here is the classification of all the numbers between 1 and 100 in groups of decreasing memorability according to Marisca Milikowski & Jan J. Elshout in What makes a number easy to remember?:

% Recalled Category Numbers
82% Singles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
72% [Tens] 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
59% Doubles 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99
42% Large Tabled 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 36, 40, 42, 45, 48, 49, 50, 54, 56, 60, 63, 64, 70, 72, 80, 81, 90, 84, 96, 100
34% Other 23, 26, 29, 31, 34, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 46, 47, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98
eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

In my case, I chose to use a non-traditional chunking by groups of 3 digits instead of 2 because it gave me a number of the form +33 6xx 6xy 6xz with:

In comparison, putting this number in the traditional French format results in a much less memorable number +33 (0)6 xx 6x y6 xz. It has a good start (06 xx) with the repeated number xx, followed with 3 chunks with unrelated tabled numbers, which are easy to remember in isolation, but are of little help in this case for the memorization of the whole sequence.

eric-brechemier commented 5 years ago

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