Thursday, August 23, 2007

How Do People Look at Numbers All Day?

I surely can't, but I have today going over a budget where each little change ripples throughout the rest of the budget. Numbers! Now I go outside for little walks, a change of scenery from the computer screen, and end up considering the arrangements of cars parked on the street and the gaps between them in terms of asymmetrical, staggered time-frames, scalable quantities of space, and slight adjustments resulting in greater cost efficiency. Seemingly irrationally inefficient arrangements of automobiles require justification, sometimes drawn out of the humid air. I'm lying to myself. There is no justification for such arrangements - they are the result of infinite yet near-microscopic contingencies framed by certain times of the day when more reliable predictions of auto movement can be made. I'm making things up in the interstices. But it has to be done, weak though the justification may be. What do people see of their world when they look at reams of numbers all day?

That's about the best I can muster at 8.5% of uncompensated time given over to the blog today....

3 comments:

MT said...

What do people see of their world when they look at reams of numbers all day?

But that is the beauty of numbers. You don't know any mathematicians? Oh the humanities!

helmut said...

Come to think of it, I don't know any mathematicians. I used to a long time ago. I understand that - the aesthetic of math and logic.

I had in mind other kinds of numbers-gazers who do things similar to the budget I just did, like accountants. It would be a personal hell to be an accountant.

MT said...

Yes, but now Hell is paperless.