Quote Originally Posted by Ron Humphrey View Post
Numbers do mean a lot, and the problem really doesn't exist in trying to use them.
that you were a radical Pythagorean, Ron !

I would argue that,in and of themselves, numbers mean nothing; their only meaning (as with all languages) comes from that assigned by humans. All mathematics (aka "numbers") is an attempt to map out a perceived territory in "reality". Sometimes, the math works quite nicely in that it produced an accurate, manipulable and predictive model for 99.999% of the interactions in that slice of reality; most engineering is an example of this. Other times, quite honestly, it is the mathematical equivalent of "here there be dragons !" and is pretty much useless (aka a lot of social sciences).

Quote Originally Posted by Ron Humphrey View Post
It really comes down to which numbers, who is using them ,and what they are using them for.
Agreed with the addition of what are they based on, how do they collect them, and is what is the correspondence between the symbol and the (supposed) object. Let me just give a really simple example of this. Back in 2003 in Iraq, any shots taken at Coalition troops were counted as "terrorist / insurgent attacks". In reality, a significant number of them stemmed from people who had been shamed and the only way to recapture their honour was to "attack" the "foreign infidels" who had taken it away. The number that represented "terrorist / insurgent attacks" was artificially high (a poor correspondence with the actual terrain being mapped), while the secondary number of terrorist / insurgent accuracy" or effectiveness (kill ratio) was artificially low. This second number led to the creation of a false assumption, backed by "numbers", of the efficacy of any insurgency. Or, in other words, the map didn't adequately represent the terrain.