How do you figure out who's got the best numbers? I know you're not going to like this, but we have to now ask ourselves what do we mean by "best"? Are the best numbers those that most accurately describe the phenomenon in question, or are the best numbers those that we like the most? Good question, I think.
What I've been leading up to over the past few posts is that for as much as we may like numbers and quantitative data and all that objectivity, truth be told, they aren't as objective as we would like. The numbers can't really tell us anything. The numbers are, depending on how we approach them, merely one way of describing whatever it is we are looking at. The numbers aren't just "there", independent of us. There are only numbers there when we choose to count. This is what my conference-attending friends need to remember. And it's what you need to remember, as well, when you read something – including my posts – where numbers and statistics and data are presented.
The question we have to be asking ourselves is: So what?
The Unites States is the richest country in the world (in terms of GDP). About 33% of all workers worldwide are unemployed or poor. The Germans (or Australians) consume the most beer per capita in the world. (It depends on the year ... there seems to be an undocumented competition going on.) Only about 16% of students pursuing a bachelor's degree in the US attending college full-time. The number of young people pursuing a college degree in Germany is about 28% of a given class year, while in the US it is almost 50%.
The response to each and every one of these statements must be the same: So what?
At best, these are facts, even if every one of these facts is a statistic, a number, something objective. But facts are just that: facts. They don't really tell us all that much, do they?
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