In the hole

You need to bear with me for a moment. We're going to jump back out of the rabbit hole ... or dive in deeper, I'm not quite I remember which way we're supposed to be going. Well, let's face it. I'm anything but alone in this regard. You don't have to look very far to figure that out.

I was recently at a conference attended by a large number of some of the most well-intended people I had met in a long time. Educators, for the most part, but others who were smack in the middle of real life and economic and policy issues ... people who were doing their damnedest to solve some serious problems. What struck me, however, is how enthralled they were by numbers. Now, don't get me wrong, I think statistics most certainly have their place, and that quantitative studies and investigations can be revealing (if understood properly). But do the numbers show us the truth, or what's right or which way to go next? In other words, can something be right without there being numbers to back it up?

I think so, but I also saw that I was in a very small minority in that group. My experience is that people who are curious, inquisitive, and interested appear to learn more faster than people who are less so. I have found that people who tend to like to read are more often curious, inquisitive and interested folks. That's just my experience, but it is an experience that has repeated itself repeatedly on two different continents in a dozen different cultures.

No, I don't have numbers and statistical correlations to back it up, but is this one of the places I need to? I don't think so, because, in the end, I think we all generally agree that knowing there are curious, inquisitive and interested people is a good thing, that having such people around is a good thing. So, it would seem that as long as it's good, we don't need all that quantitative backup. That's comforting, isn't it?