Statistics are compiled to reflect the truth. But a reflection is not usually the whole truth and is therefore inaccurate, by definition. Faced with the choice between an answer that is available but inaccurate and, well, no answer, what do we do?
The short answer is to stop looking, a path that all of us have chosen to follow on all but a very few topics in life. We resign to the belief that no one could possibly know everything, but together, we could know more. Hence Wikipedia, I guess.
But the words in Wikipedia has much less immediate impact than numbers. Today, I was faced with a web creation: the World Clock. It's created by a group of people who call themselves Poodwaddle and who specialise in making web gadgets you can use on your blog.
On the World Clock is a running tally of our world's "truths": the number of people being born, the number of bicycles being produced, the number of people dying from "noncommunicable diseases" including war. It gives you the option to view the tally as from the beginning of this year, this month, this week, this day, or even this moment: you can clear the tally at any time, and watch the numbers grow.
So for those of us with vivid visual imaginations, it becomes very tempting to allow your mind to see the numbers in 3-Dimentional flashing colours across the globe, from the flies hovering around a child's eye infection to the mechanical fingertips of production lines churning out computers, and even a tear drop or two, from the 233 marriages and 47 divorces that came into effect in the last 2 minutes.
Lovely? Shock & Horror? In a heartbeat, I felt like a freaked-out intergalactic migrant.
Or maybe I should just give my head a break and do some of the work I'm paid to do.
The short answer is to stop looking, a path that all of us have chosen to follow on all but a very few topics in life. We resign to the belief that no one could possibly know everything, but together, we could know more. Hence Wikipedia, I guess.
But the words in Wikipedia has much less immediate impact than numbers. Today, I was faced with a web creation: the World Clock. It's created by a group of people who call themselves Poodwaddle and who specialise in making web gadgets you can use on your blog.
On the World Clock is a running tally of our world's "truths": the number of people being born, the number of bicycles being produced, the number of people dying from "noncommunicable diseases" including war. It gives you the option to view the tally as from the beginning of this year, this month, this week, this day, or even this moment: you can clear the tally at any time, and watch the numbers grow.
So for those of us with vivid visual imaginations, it becomes very tempting to allow your mind to see the numbers in 3-Dimentional flashing colours across the globe, from the flies hovering around a child's eye infection to the mechanical fingertips of production lines churning out computers, and even a tear drop or two, from the 233 marriages and 47 divorces that came into effect in the last 2 minutes.
Lovely? Shock & Horror? In a heartbeat, I felt like a freaked-out intergalactic migrant.
Or maybe I should just give my head a break and do some of the work I'm paid to do.
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