"Numbers are central to the stories we tell. They leverage sentiment and ignite emotion and can be downright dangerous. But if the weight of numbers can be crushing, who is crushed depends on who has the numbers on their side. Numbers are always exaggerated or downplayed depending on the story we want to tell; Joseph Nye observed: “it’s not just whose army wins, it’s also whose story wins." [...] Telling a story in a way conducive to ones interests is the art of influence, and again numbers are crucial. The key issue, as every statistician knows, is reliability: the higher the reliability, the less refutable are the numbers, at which point it becomes the proponent’s task to weld that irrefutability to the story they are peddling. [...] It would take another seven Tahrir Squares to accommodate one million people. At a more comfortable 5ft2/ person, a million people would cover 65 football pitches. If they formed a line, it would stretch 762km, or well beyond Damascus. Which brings us back to stories. Are numbers relevant? Do the numbers in Tahrir Square, or Dera’a, or Sana’a matter to the issues at stake? Certainly they do. The stories told by numbers influence opinion and sentiment, they comfort and enrage, are cause for joy and despair. And for all these reasons, they will always be controversial." majalla/eng/2011/10/article55226854
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 20:04:31 +0000
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