Number Knack

Once upon a time, I listened to lovely statistics and wondered how one could remember and quote them. Numbers nudged me towards certainty about any matter; but, I never used to verify them. I plainly accepted them without ever thinking how anyone could juggle those numbers and make a natural fool out of me. Here’s some simple wisdom from the guru of Artificial Intelligence, Uncle John McCarthy (b.1927) …

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Someone argued that when oil became much more expensive, international grain trade would be infeasible and countries would have to raise their own food. It took a while to find the relevant fact, and I eventually telephoned a professor of ocean engineering at M.I.T. The relevant fact is that a large bulk carrier, carrying grain, uses one gallon of fuel for 1600 tonne-miles of transportation. Arithmetic tells us that even a 100 fold increase in oil prices wouldn't make international grain transportation infeasible, although it sure would damage the rest of the economy if there were no replacement for oil.

These examples are not important in themselves. They just illustrate the important point. Many questions can be settled by recourse to available statistics and arithmetic - arithmetic not higher mathematics, although higher mathematics is also useful. The converse is that failing to look up statistics and do the arithmetic is a recipe for ignorance.

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