ABSTRACT
In nationwide election campaigns, televised debates involving candidates, journalists and presenters are important milestones. It is incredible how many numbers are bandied about by the participants on those occasions. In one 90-minute confrontation some time ago, as many as 196 numbers were pulled out of various hats in eff orts to substantiate the speaker’s political program, a ack opponents and win favor with potential voters. Think of it, 196 numbers in 90 minutes-more than one number for
every 30 seconds of discussion. This did not include those vital groups of numbers that we use to refer to years, which are so important in political debates. Here are the nearly 200 numbers that were cited:
Ranging from the monstrous to the puny, 1,600,000,000,000 to ¼, these numbers were tossed around pell-mell in the discussion in the order shown in the preceding fi gure. Of course, not even the most a entive audience could possibly take all this in. Nor can it be believed that sharing information, the purpose these numbers are claimed to serve, is the uppermost consideration in the contestants’ minds. It is more likely that their true purpose is obfuscation, because slinging around numbers dotted with millions and billions has li le to do with sharing information-it is rather like peacocks spreading their tails in their mating rituals. Nor is it very helpful when participants in the discussion feel called upon to patronize their audience by such ploys as: “So if our national debt of 1.6 trillion were a stack of 1,000 dollar bills, it would rise to a dozen times the height of Mount Everest.”
