Can You Figure It Out?

That the U.S or for that matter many other countries are in recession is well known. The question is how does one measure recession? In the US the main yardstick is the shrinking of the GDP for two successive quarters. There are also many other indices that are closely monitored as indicating the health of the economy like retail sales, new house purchases and real estate prices, motor car sales, and so on.

But what I saw on US television one morning made me laugh out loud. There, in the midst of a serious discussion on the dismal state of the economy, an analyst came up with a startling statistic. He said that the sales of premium brand underwear had remained steady but sales of the mass brands had fallen, thereby giving a new insight into economic matters – that the rich are doing well but ordinary folk had to make do with underwear with holes.

What better measure do we need to gauge the plight of ordinary people, he argued.

I agree that this is a case of numerical measures carried too far but it shows us the way to better thinking – what I call numerical thinking. What this means is that wherever we can measure something that is being discussed we ought to do so and then start the process of interpreting data. It is all too easy to form opinions on the basis of “feelings” or intuition etc. These tend to reflect our biases and prejudices.
The more contentious the issue the more we allow emotion to influence our thinking.

Come to think about it, which issue is not contentious?

A case in point was when there was a discussion among young cricket enthusiasts as to who has made a more significant contribution to Indian cricket, Dravid or Sachi. While I have devoted another article showing how to start such a thinking process, I may state here that before the youngsters came to blows I suggested that if one takes into account the number of times these batsmen have saved India or led the team to victory, Dravid comes out better, if statistics and not feelings were to hold sway and accepted as a yardstick. There is a website that has done this calculation!

In the wake of the success of the movie ‘Slumdog Milionaire’ there was a discussion at a party in Washington DC on Mumbai. At one stage, the conversation centred on a comparison between New York and Mumbai. An American friend contended that Mumbai was not only poorer but was more criminalized. My NRI friends joined in and agreed with the American. I was able to stun my friends with the statistic that crime per capita was higher in New York than in Mumbai!

The conversation then veered round to communal riots in India. This is a convenient stick with which India- bashers beat our country. The feeling is that Hindus and Muslims cannot live in peace and have to periodically indulge in blood letting.

Let me do some numerical thinking based on research not feelings. In the period 1960 to 1993 ( according to a research paper ) there were 554 communal incidents. This amounts to less than 18 incidents a year in a country of a billion people. Is this catastrophic? Think numerically about this fact. I do agree however that even one life lost is one too many.

One inexplicable paradox, is how did a country that has made epoch making contributions to mathematics come to devalue numerical thinking? I recall being very disappointed one day when I asked the following question of a class of commerce students : A shopkeeper tells you that a pen that you want to buy is priced Rs .25. He however offers to sell it at Rs. 20. I asked the students what was the discount offered in percentage terms? Fewer than 40 % got it right. I believe the semi-educated shopkeeper was better at such calculations.

I am afraid this devaluation of mathematics has led to numerical thinking taking a back seat. The tragedy is compounded by an indifference to data mining storage and availability. This is shocking in view of the ease with which Indians have taken to Information Technology .

This leads us to another paradox. According to author Pavan Varma, one of the world’s most extensive databases – and a perfectly workable system to access it for mass applications – was in existence more than 3000 years ago! The Bhrigu Samhita, a treatise on astrology first written in Vedic times compiles at least 500,000 horoscopes and claims to have an infinite number of records of people and the events in their lives. Advanced statistical methods were used for this compilation.

I am not commenting on the merits of astrology to which I will devote another article. I refer to the use of mathematics and consequently to numerical thinking that was once our hallmark.