The Numbers Game
Have you ever been asked to come up with estimates about things that you really don’t know how to predict? Do you sometimes read numbers in the paper such as the amount of CO2 that we need to reduce to stop global warming? I often wonder how people arrive at these numbers – i know that I’ve felt pressure at times to come up with marketable numbers to give to customers predicting how accurate something will be, or when a given feature will be ready or how much better than the previous version is the new version etc…
I was just listening to This Week in Science and their interview with Dr Orrin Pilkey rung true with me. He’s written a book about scientific modelling and the culture within science of coming up with media releasable numbers that don’t always have a scientific basis. Worth a listen.
[tags]mathematical modelling, maths, orrin pilkey, science, useless arithmetic[/tags]
yes, numbers. I know that there were no comments until I commented, and now their is 1 comment. I too was often baffled working in government and reading and hearing about the goldenisation (my word for the day) of numbers – budget figures, new vehicles, new buildings, new equipment, percentage increases, comparisons of these numbers with numbers from the last government. It was always highly subjective the way the numbers were used, and like you pointed out – utter meaningless to most people, who don’t have a valid frame of reference for comprehending the numbers.
What does a $0.8M boost to such and such a government service mean? How do you compare it with another state/country? what is an appropriate level of funding for that service anyway? Where will the money be used? Is that the best use of the money – it just asks more questions than answers anything…
The fascination with numbers is mind boggling
its a really good board game on the computer and it can be up to 4 players and by the way its a maths game and i dont want to type in the code thankyou