188

188 is the natural number that comes after 187 and before 189. It is an even composite number with prime factorization 188 = 2^2 × 47. Its proper divisors are 1, 2, 4, 47, and 94, which sum to 148; therefore 188 is a deficient number (the sum of proper divisors is less than the number itself). It is not a prime, a square, or a Fibonacci number, and it is not expressible as a sum of two squares due to the presence of the prime 47 (which is 3 modulo 4) to an odd power.

In various numeral systems, 188 is represented as follows: in Roman numerals, CLXXXVIII; in binary, 10111100; in octal, 274; and in hexadecimal, BC. The decimal value 188 also corresponds to the Unicode code point U+00BC, the vulgar fraction one quarter (¼), a character that appears in several encodings including Unicode and ISO/IEC 8859-1.

In calendar terms, the 188th day of a common year is July 7, while in a leap year it falls on July 6. This offset reflects the extra day in February during leap years.

Overall, 188 is a small, well-defined integer with standard arithmetic properties and a few straightforward representations in numeral systems, calendar usage, and text encoding.