"The Strong Law of Small Numbers" is a humorous paper by mathematician Richard K. Guy and also the so-called law that it proclaims: "There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them."[1] In other words, any given small number appears in far more contexts than may seem reasonable, leading to many apparently surprising coincidences in mathematics, simply because small numbers appear so often and yet are so few. Guy's 1988 paper gives 35 examples in support of this thesis, and is thus an example of proof by intimidation. Confirmation bias can lead inexperienced mathematicians to conclude that these concepts are related, which in fact they are not.
Guy's observation has since become part of mathematical folklore, and is commonly referenced by other authors.[2]