On Numbers... (or Relativity, Pi and Kate Bush)

3.14159265...

Numbers.

At one point, I thought that numbers and calculations were concrete, absolute, definite, authoritative, unchangeable, universal. But they're not. They're relative, fluid, self-defined, malleable.

People are frightened by numbers. When a number is attached to a piece of information, it's taken very seriously; the number somehow gives credibility to things that would otherwise be questioned.

Calculations and formulas are not perfect ends in and of themselves. Just because they're prescribed in some program/list/textbook doesn't mean they're God-given-absolutes. People created them. If you want to calculate something, you must determine what you want to calculate, set your parameters, and create a formula. The important thing is that you know the implications of your outcome... that you know what your end result is telling you.

There is no single correct way to calculate anything. Similar to the thinking of today's society, numbers and calculations are relativistic.

Numbers are also easily manipulated. If I can learn to manipulate them in a few month's time, I don't even want to know what the professionals are capable of. Give me a couple of years worth of practice, and I'll give you any value you want, allowing you to prove anything you want, backed up with "concrete" statistics. It's that possible.

Frightening.

Between work and discovering a new musician, I've had numbers spinning in my head pretty much 24/7. Kate Bush * wrote a brilliant song called 'Pi' on her new album, Aerial *. She somehow manages to turn a string of numbers into something serenely beautiful and melodic. The song flows... if you were to listen purely to the music without paying attention to the lyrics, you'd never know she simply rattles off numbers. Interestingly, Tori Amos is heavily influenced by Bush... their music is eerily similar both vocally and instrumentally (piano).

The complete song is on her myspace page, though you might have to be registered to listen to it: Kate Bush's myspace page

To hear a sample of Pi, you can go to Amazon and scroll to the bottom of the page (unfortunately, the rattling-off-numbers part isn't included!!): 30 second Pi sample on Amazon


Lyric of the day: "Sweet and gentle and sensitive man with an obsessive nature and deep fascination for numbers and a complete infatuation with the calculation of Pi... oh... he does love his numbers and they run, they run, they run him in a great big circle, in a circle of infinity... 3 . 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9 7 9 3 2 3 8 4 6 2 6 4 3 3 8 3 2 7 9 . . . 5 0 2 8 8 4 1 9 7 1 6 9 3 9 9 3 7 5 1 0 5 8 2 3 1 9 7 4 9 4 4 5 9 2 3 0 7 8 1 6 4 0 6 2 8 6 2 0 8 8 2 1 4 8 0 8 6 5 1 3 2 . . . 8 2 3 0 6 6 4 7 0 9 3 8 4 4 6 0 9 5 5 0 5 8 2 2 3..." (Thanks to Kate Bush!)