This week, the entertainment world lost two legends. Actor Malcolm Jamal Warner died on July 20, and two days later rocker Ozzy Osbourne died. For some people on social media, this opened this door for speculation about who will be number three. This mindset is often associated with celebrity deaths, and pop culture even makes it a storyline. An episode of 30 Rock was built around one of its characters being worried about becoming the third celebrity death. So why do we believe that deaths come in threes? “One thing happens by accident, a second thing happens by chance, but if you see it happening three times, that establishes a pattern,” said Dr. John Hoopes, an anthropology professor at the University of Kansas. Are three celebrity deaths actually a pattern? In the U.S. alone, one person dies every 11 seconds, according to the U.S. Census. In that same time span, about 20 people will have died worldwide. “There’s no relationship between these three deaths. It’s random data in which we see a pattern,” said Dr. Hoopes. Finding a pattern in random data is called "apophenia." One example is noticing that the time on a clock is 11:11, but not caring or noticing if it was 11:12 when you looked. Finding patterns in our surroundings is second nature, a survival tactic. If people are taught to be careful of snakes in the woods, they might be careful at the first sight of a long stick embedded in grass. Maybe in the case of celebrity deaths, it comes down to the number involved. Dr. Hoopes explained that three has always been a sacred number that’s everywhere, including the trinity in the Bible, which references the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Most churches have three points in front, usually a center spire that’s flanked by two lower spires or towers. Beyond religious references, the "rule of threes" is applied in many facets of life, including lighter topics. There's the Three Stooges, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Three Blind Mice. The "rule of threes" can imply that something has a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are threes all around us if we care to look for them.