Can we begin a sentence with a 'number'?

3 more votes from other users are needed to close this question.

This is the message I got hovering the mouse over close voting tab.

I wonder can we begin any sentence with a numeric value? Is it good practice?

Answer

One website lists this APA guidance:

Use words for numbers beginning a sentence, title, or heading (Forty-eight percent responded; Ten subjects improved, and 4 subjects did not.).

However, I can understand why you'd see the sentence you observed when you hovered over the mouse button. The software looks at the number of close votes, performs a quick subtraction problem, and then inserts the result into the beginning of the sentence. It would be a hassle to write extra code to spell out each number in words:

if NumberOfCloseVotesNeeded = 1 then  
  println ("One close vote needed to close this question");  
else if NumberOfCloseVotesNeeded = 2 then  
  println ("Two close votes needed to close this question");  
if NumberOfCloseVotesNeeded = 3 then  
  println ("Three close vote needed to close this question");  

else if NumberOfCloseVotesNeeded = 4 then  
  println ("Four close votes needed to close this question");   

instead of the more straightforward:

printlin (NumberOfCloseVotesNeeded, " close votes needed to close this question");

So, even though I would recommend spelling out the word in a written report, or in a meta post:

Three close votes were needed to close the question.

I would recommend against making a clunky change to software simply to make an automated sentence to conform to a style guide.