Among publishers, advertisers and other business people, the idea that Americans hate numbers is almost proverbial. A publishing industry ruling holds that every equation an author puts into a book manuscript will cut that book’s sales in half. Experts decry falling American math scores, suggesting that such math illiteracy may signal threats to future American dominance in business and industry. And, in business school, professors warn their students against “dumping”—that is, giving information in the form of numbers—in their business presentations.
But there is at least as much evidence to suggest that Americans, like other people, enjoy math when it is presented well. Many parents report that their children go from hating to loving math when presented with better teachers or individualized tutoring, and books as heavy on math as Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and Roger Penrose’s The Road To Reality sell in high volume, even, in Hawking’s case, dominating best-seller lists. (So far the opinion of the editors). Mathematics is a progressive subject: each new idea builds directly on the ideas that precede it in the curriculum, so it’s important not to miss a single detail, and students may have trouble moving at a standardized pace. Perhaps it is frustration, not inherently boring qualities, that burns out so many students in math; It is perhaps for these reasons that the mathematician Timothy Gowers has written: “I am convinced that any child given individual tuition in mathematics from an early age by a good and enthusiastic teacher will grow up to like it.”
That the human mind is drawn to the neatness of numbers is evident in at least one trend in the publishing industry: the huge success of the Harper’s Index, which, since its debut in 1984, has gone from a hot new idea to a staple of American magazine publishing. Every month, this venerable magazine (published since 1850) provides its readers with a list of precisely defined number factoids, and readers have found this raw data dump to be among the magazine’s most addictive features for nearly eighteen years.
According to writer George Plimpton (writing in the introduction to a paperback anthology of Index greatest hits), the Index was the brainchild of Harpers’ then-publisher Lewis Lapham (now semi-retired). Lapham had tried a similar format in a column he had written for the Washington Post, stringing together an index of fanciful topics (“cloned mice,” “actors drowned at sea”). Charged with redesigning the venerable monthly, Lapham decided to try the format again, but with actual numbers, sourced by Harpers’ small but excellent research team. The first item on that first index was Total Hours of Television Viewed in US Households in 1983: 218,000,000,000. (If that number doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.) Subscription renewals soon started rolling in, and other publications were stealing the idea.
Some, usually most of the numbers are clichés, as in a recent Index (April 2008), where we learn: Percentage change last year in the number of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy: +40. Often, the magazine’s indefatigable researchers piece together one or more current issues: Probability an American believes the economy is in recession: 3 in 5 Percentage change since July in the number of U.S. newspaper articles each month that use the word “recession”: +1,300 Point achieved.
Sometimes the numbers seem to comment on each other, and the Index moves towards a climax of bad news: Number of five Ohio voting machine systems that had “critical security failures” in a state-commissioned study: 5 Number of systems taken out of operation: 0
And, always, a good deal of the numbers are just for fun: Number of Grammy Awards won to date by Barack Obama and Radiohead, respectively: 2, 2 Estimated number of bacteria transferred to a bathroom by “double bathing,” according to a Clemson University study: 2,750
What do these numbers prove in themselves? Perhaps nothing. Certainly, devoid of context and devoid of footnotes, these little facts should prompt readers as many questions as they answer. But if nothing else, the enduring popularity of the feature shows that American readers aren’t afraid of being asked to learn some numbers, to compare one number to another, to ponder what a number might mean. It suggests that we understand the importance of data, of statistics, in helping us understand complex social phenomena. (After all, you can say “Americans watch a lot of TV” until you turn blue, but it won’t have the power of the nine zeros that follow 218.)