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We live and die by the stupid numbers
By Wan Lixin |
August 10, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SOME numbers can be important. For instance, when the NASA Mars rover "Curiosity" landed on Monday after traveling 352 million miles at a cost of US$2.5 billion, the landing was expected to take place at 1:31pm - the slightest deviation can be disastrous.
Some numbers are important only to a small segment of the population. For instance, a double digit GDP growth figure means more to an ambitious official than an average wage earner.
Some numbers are obfuscating. For instance, when experts pronounced triumphantly an entrepreneur confidence index of 130, I doubt if entrepreneurs know how confident they are.
In time we have developed a degree of superstition about numbers. We are also superstitious about gold, but unlike gold, which is scarce, numbers can be created artificially, ad infinitum.
Clever academics have been perfecting the art of quantitative studies to seek social recognition, professional advancement, or fame. Recently it was reported that as of 2010 the Chinese nation's "rejuvenation index" had soared to 0. 6274. Experts explained helpfully that this figure means we Chinese people have already achieved 62 percent of the challenging task of Chinese national rejuvenation.
That's cause for celebration, for as late as 2005, the index was a mere 0.4644, suggesting an accelerated tempo in the rehabilitation of our national fibre. The index was announced by no lesser personage than Yang Yiyong, director of the Macro Economic Research Institute for Social Development under the State Development Planning Commission, at a forum cosponsored by Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing University.
A noted Chinese American historian once famously blamed the collapse of the Chinese empire on its failure to develop digitalized management. Ironically, the professor was later sacked by his university for failing a quantitative student review of his teaching.
It's getting harder to create an instant sensation in the Internet age. Skimpily clad stars and starlets can drop broad hints about their latest escapade to paparazzi and a scientist can impress by developing a Mars-landing rover, but for social researchers, quantitative studies can impress the laymen by creating the impression of academic rigor.
The endeavor to index the extent of our rejuvenation can only be a well thought out ploy. It is politically safe, for it taps into our national pride. It has the appearance of being academically rigorous, for the calculation of the index has been carried to four places after the decimal point.
Essentially, scholars' obsession with figures is driven by their desire to serve the power and money interests, with an view to achieving power and acquiring money for themselves.
This flattering perception of our rejuvenated national fiber marginalizes and sanitizes from our consciousness the blatant cases of social injustice and inequality surrounding us. A social researcher should properly be a critic, rather than a sycophant.
Beijing Daily reported this Monday that a survey finds that last year nationally 84.7 percent of Chinese families own their homes, with an average floor area of 116 square meters, or 36 sqm per person.
How many of us feel ashamed for not having lived up to the average? Apparently nothing harmonizes more than these neat averages.
The Railway Ministry shelled out more than 18 million yuan in 2010 in making a five-minute image-boosting video flash. Following recent allegations by the national audit office that the video-making did not follow prescribed procedures, inspectors raided the home of Chen Yihan, a junior official involved in the video project, and found more than 10 million yuan in cash, and at least nine property ownership certificates. If 116 sqm of home space is cause for pride, officials like Chen, disgraced or otherwise, should take pride in having significantly inflated the average home ownership figure.
Our faith in numbers has been nothing new. The trick about digitalization lies in first identifying an indicator as representing something so desirable that, the more of it is considered the better.
Steel was found to be so desirable during the Great Leap Forward movement in 1958, as millions of Chinese people were exhorted to produce iron and steel in makeshift smelters in their homes to catch up with Great Britain and the United States in steel production. Today an inordinately high stock of steel is usually of a sign of overcapacity, sluggish sales, and losses.
Since the 1980s our universities have developed new faith in an index based on the number of papers published in learned journals. Only recently some have learned that these numbers have precious little to do with innovation, but a lot to do with vanity. We are well supplied with a troop of political adventurers and opportunists ready to cash in on our vanity, and we should be on guard against them.
Some numbers are important only to a small segment of the population. For instance, a double digit GDP growth figure means more to an ambitious official than an average wage earner.
Some numbers are obfuscating. For instance, when experts pronounced triumphantly an entrepreneur confidence index of 130, I doubt if entrepreneurs know how confident they are.
In time we have developed a degree of superstition about numbers. We are also superstitious about gold, but unlike gold, which is scarce, numbers can be created artificially, ad infinitum.
Clever academics have been perfecting the art of quantitative studies to seek social recognition, professional advancement, or fame. Recently it was reported that as of 2010 the Chinese nation's "rejuvenation index" had soared to 0. 6274. Experts explained helpfully that this figure means we Chinese people have already achieved 62 percent of the challenging task of Chinese national rejuvenation.
That's cause for celebration, for as late as 2005, the index was a mere 0.4644, suggesting an accelerated tempo in the rehabilitation of our national fibre. The index was announced by no lesser personage than Yang Yiyong, director of the Macro Economic Research Institute for Social Development under the State Development Planning Commission, at a forum cosponsored by Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing University.
A noted Chinese American historian once famously blamed the collapse of the Chinese empire on its failure to develop digitalized management. Ironically, the professor was later sacked by his university for failing a quantitative student review of his teaching.
It's getting harder to create an instant sensation in the Internet age. Skimpily clad stars and starlets can drop broad hints about their latest escapade to paparazzi and a scientist can impress by developing a Mars-landing rover, but for social researchers, quantitative studies can impress the laymen by creating the impression of academic rigor.
The endeavor to index the extent of our rejuvenation can only be a well thought out ploy. It is politically safe, for it taps into our national pride. It has the appearance of being academically rigorous, for the calculation of the index has been carried to four places after the decimal point.
Essentially, scholars' obsession with figures is driven by their desire to serve the power and money interests, with an view to achieving power and acquiring money for themselves.
This flattering perception of our rejuvenated national fiber marginalizes and sanitizes from our consciousness the blatant cases of social injustice and inequality surrounding us. A social researcher should properly be a critic, rather than a sycophant.
Beijing Daily reported this Monday that a survey finds that last year nationally 84.7 percent of Chinese families own their homes, with an average floor area of 116 square meters, or 36 sqm per person.
How many of us feel ashamed for not having lived up to the average? Apparently nothing harmonizes more than these neat averages.
The Railway Ministry shelled out more than 18 million yuan in 2010 in making a five-minute image-boosting video flash. Following recent allegations by the national audit office that the video-making did not follow prescribed procedures, inspectors raided the home of Chen Yihan, a junior official involved in the video project, and found more than 10 million yuan in cash, and at least nine property ownership certificates. If 116 sqm of home space is cause for pride, officials like Chen, disgraced or otherwise, should take pride in having significantly inflated the average home ownership figure.
Our faith in numbers has been nothing new. The trick about digitalization lies in first identifying an indicator as representing something so desirable that, the more of it is considered the better.
Steel was found to be so desirable during the Great Leap Forward movement in 1958, as millions of Chinese people were exhorted to produce iron and steel in makeshift smelters in their homes to catch up with Great Britain and the United States in steel production. Today an inordinately high stock of steel is usually of a sign of overcapacity, sluggish sales, and losses.
Since the 1980s our universities have developed new faith in an index based on the number of papers published in learned journals. Only recently some have learned that these numbers have precious little to do with innovation, but a lot to do with vanity. We are well supplied with a troop of political adventurers and opportunists ready to cash in on our vanity, and we should be on guard against them.
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