ABSTRACT
The invention, development, and use of numbers are part and parcel of human evolution. This chapter contains a narrative on how numbers were invented by our ancestors, tracing their story from tallies of early notches on animal bones to their long journey towards the establishment of today’s number system. It describes simultaneous efforts to overcome problems related to the naming and notation of numbers, in conjunction with the choice of a base. It then discusses all the other developments necessary over the millennia, including the invention of zero, to arrive at today’s functional decimal number system. It explains how numbers extended our natural ability to discern orders or magnitude and enabled counting and measurements, and how the quantification of our physical world that numbers enabled is linked to human development. The chapter ends with fact-checking tips that address how the heterogeneity among units influences the interpretation of statistics, with the example of different sizes of businesses. It also discusses our discomfort with large numbers, the fact that sometimes the absence of numbers can be as misleading as the wrong numbers, and ends with a caution not to fall for wasteful uses of numbers, such as what happened historically with the unfortunate obsession with numerology.
