Mono Monday: Numbers

WHAT A GREAT THEME! Thank you Nickimags888!

Sorry this isn't an arty picture with numbers but more an indication of how much numbers figure in our lives. Not extensive by any stretch of the imagination. I was tired and fell asleep after dinner so lost some of the evening.

What else can I say about numbers? They are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Too big a subject to do justice here... G said to take a picture of a phone - except you hardly get phones with dial pads any more! And really - how often do you use the number pad on a TV remote control? The book is fascinating though.

I must give a special mention to Honeycombebeach who blipped an idea I had for today's theme... She's a great out-of-the-box thinker! :) Can't help thinking of the Sunday school song 1-2-3 Jesus loves me!

I digress slightly. My work involves a lot of numbers, so I tend to try to stay away from them as much as I can. In a world obsessed with figures, this excerpt from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry is what I've lived by since my late teens...

From Chapter 4...

     If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of the grown-ups and their ways. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

     If you were to say to the grown-ups: "I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof," they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: "I saw a house that cost $20,000." Then they would exclaim: "Oh, what a pretty house that is!"

In the first few weeks of my new job, my boss asked me to do a report keep track of the progress we were making. It was very much a numbers thing game - something I am incapable of. I finally sent off my report recording a month's worth of progress. I've never been asked again.

And just to finish... A link to a song that's stuck in my head since I first heard it way back in the late 70s... New Musik - Living By Numbers - written as we were just entering the digital age. The lyric "They don't want your name, just your number" stands out. Earlier today, I was on a conference call to the UK listening to a geek analyst tell me how he wanted a tracking spreadsheet populated. It had a column for trainer's name (of course) but also one for their ID number - something we never refer to and really has no relevance. I asked what the purpose of the ID number was. He said, it's because people will often spell a name wrong (!!! NOT ME!) but they'll get the number right, so we know who is being referred to. I say - who's to say someone won't type a number wrong??!! Then you could have the wrong number as well as a misspelt name. Honestly!