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Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2008
Of all the terrible things in the world, nothing is as terrible, with the possible exceptions of tofurkey and albums by Canadian Idol contestants, as a number. Numbers confuse and frighten us. All numbers -- whether odd or even, whether integer or fraction, whether prime or subprime -- make our heads hurt and our hearts race. They cause us to make irrational decisions. It's time we move beyond numbers. It's time for a post-number world. Want proof of the harm caused by numbers? Consider these (not quite) randomly selected excerpts from recent Citizen articles: "11.3 per cent of the Pontiac's 15,000 people are unemployed"; "a shortfall of between $5 billion and $10 billion in the 2009-10 fiscal year"; "begun in 1999 at an estimated cost of $96 million, cost $400 million by the time it went into operation in 2004." What do these passages have in common? They all contain numbers, and they all contain bad news. Every day, we are deluged with awful number-laden stories. TSX plummets 900 points. Nortel cuts 1,300 employees. Canadian dollar nose-dives 15 cents. Blah blah blah (number) blah blah blah, PANIC! Every article containing a number that has ever appeared in the Citizen has, in fact, been about something negative. Except for the positive stories, which I'd prefer we conveniently ignore (thanks). Big numbers are particularly harmful to the public's psyche. For example: 9,873,452. Also: 12,345,893. And, of course: 134,897,234. Numbers like these are grotesque. We cannot possibly be expected to comprehend them. When we see these polydigit ogres, we instinctively recoil. "Big number!" our brains scream. "Can't process ... everything getting hazy ... must ... watch ... reality television." Mathematicians and economists claim many numbers are small, citing such examples as 3 and 7. Numbers are good, they tell us, vastly superior to imprecise terms such as "few" or "many." Don't be fooled. Sure, there are wee numbers, but these crafty digits like nothing more than to congregate and form monstrosities like 77,737 and 37,733.37 -- numbers that transport us to a land of confusion, to borrow the words of renowned number-hater Phil Collins. Numbers are not only stupefying and unnerving, but also a source of many prejudices. Take ageism, for example. If you were introduced to a man and told he was 85 years old, your first thought, naturally, would be: "This person is too old to be addressed like a normal person, so I will call him 'Gramps' and talk with him only about weather and oatmeal." But if you were introduced to the same man and told instead that he was chronologically enhanced, age-wise, your first thought would then be: "This person of indefinite age is no doubt spry and agile of mind, and I will therefore engage him in conversation on important matters, such as postmodernism and celebrity babies." Another problem with numbers is their association with the disease known as mathematics. You remember math. It's that horrible thing you purged from your noodle the day high school ended. As adults, unfortunately, we still have to perform minor calculations from time to time -- when leaving a tip, say, or to determine a street's "real" speed limit. These forays back into math appear inconsequential, harmless. But they aren't. They lead to a comfort with math, a sense that rudimentary arithmetic isn't really that difficult. We must resist such thoughts. The last thing we need is a world where people aren't afraid of math, a world where people understand their financial statements and do their own taxes. A legion of poor-to-mediocre financial advisers and accountants depend on our numerical ignorance for their livelihood. It won't be easy to rid the world of numbers, which are everywhere -- on pay stubs, road signs, clocks. But it's possible. Businesses could substitute categories for numbers. Instead of putting price tags on consumer goods, for example, retailers could label them as "affordable," "not-so-affordable," or "just-keep-walking." Another alternative to numbers: colours. The goings-on in the stock market, for example, could be represented by colours, similar to terrorist threats in the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System. This would do wonders for consumer confidence. Instead of saying the Dow plunged 700 points today (Ahhhhh!), we could say the Dow is magenta today, or perhaps teal (doesn't sound so bad). Numbers have to go. They are bewildering and malicious, not to mention archaic. We no longer use phrases like "that's groovy" or "my mutual funds are performing well," so why do we still use numbers? Unless I'm mistaken, numbers were invented around the same time as the hula hoop. Have you see many hula hoops lately?
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