The Act of Writing in the Age of Numbers - Essay Example

The Act of Writing in the Age of Numbers Numbers have been an important part of writing as evidenced by history and their relevance in writing continues to increase with the advance of technology. Nowadays every piece of writing comes with numbers engrossed in it, from Facebook likes and comments to the most popular email. There is a great similarity between how numbers were used in the past and how they are used today; with the only major difference being the way they are used. In the past a verse used to operate on a structure of repetitive alliterations without regulations but nowadays there is emphasis on the regulation of a meter and the need to introduce numbers gradually (Marche). Numbers do not always necessarily indicate the relevance of an article and as a result I agree with Marche that there is a need of being indifferent with the numbers in a text. Numbers are not directly connected to the quality of an article, but are mainly determined by the person, firm or organization that has written the article. Characteristics such as the popularity of the person or organization, social status, career among other factors usually influence the numbers. This is because majority of the people are not always rationale and often base their decisions on emotions, their relationship with the author and selfish personal reasons among other factors. Therefore it is possible to have an article that is of poor quality and that is not relevant to the subject of discussion attracting large numbers. For example, a post by a celebrity over the social media may draw a lot of feedback from the followers yet it is irrelevant and at the same time a post by an unpopular person may attract very few responses despite the fact that it may be of high quality. Numbers usually portray an image that is not always true about the respective piece of work which is temporary and which lingers on the mind of the reader for the time the work is under discussion by majority of the people. Once the period bypasses people will always tend to forget the numbers that where attached to the piece of writing and if the article was irrelevant they will forget almost everything about it. This is in contrary to when a piece of writing is relevant, since it will convey the truth regarding the subject area of the discussion regardless the corresponding numbers. This is because truth has a tendency of remaining in the minds of people for a very long time and possibly over life time. Therefore, there is need for readers in this generation to be indifferent with the numbers in a text since there is a high possibility that they may be deceptive. For example an email may attract a wide pool of responses and it may appear to be relevant for a short time, but if the content was irrelevant within a period of two months it will be forgotten. A good case is an email made by a popular politician about mere politics which do not hold any water which lasts for two days and it is forgotten completely. Unless the culture of being indifferent on the numbers in a text is embraced many upcoming writers will be less of writers and more of word processers since their main aim will be to fulfill the required numbers rather than focusing on the quality. This tendency has already been witnessed in learning institutions where students instead of responding to the respective questions asked write totally irrelevant responses to meet the required numbers. The worrying tendency can be attributed to the examiners who overemphasize on numbers of the word and end up heavily penalizing students who do not meet the required word count. Therefore, there is need for the discipline of pretending to be indifferent with the numbers to start from those in high ranks downwards if it will be effective. Data collection and analysis is usually prone to errors and thus numbers presented from such kind of data poses various challenges unless the numbers are assumed to be nonchalant. In case the readers do not pretend to ignore such numbers, then they will make wrong choices based on things to do with distance, price, voltage of a gadget, characteristics of the inhabitants of a particular country among others. For example, a word processor machine may be indicated that it uses high voltage when it actually requires half of the voltage indicated. The user of such a gadget may live in fear that he may lose unsaved data due to power outage and may end up incurring additional unnecessary cost of power back up. Such a consumer if he had paid attention to the text in the manual that probably explained more on the electricity usage would not have incurred the extra cost. Not everything that can be counted tallies and also not everything that counts can be counted or quantified. Majority of the people agree with this statement since it is clear that some numbers are unnecessary and they are thus of no help to their users. Relying on such type of data is only waste of time and other resources since they do not alter the decisions made. On the other hand, there a lot of important qualitative factors that cannot be expressed in any numerical way and which are very essential in any given form of decision making process. Therefore, numbers are just one form of determinants among the very many types that influence people in decision making and thus over emphasizing on numbers alone will lead to loss of other important information. As a result for various readers to make the correct inferences they should at least pretend to ignore the numbers. Literature depends majorly on words and has very little reliance on numbers since majority of the literature work is usually expressed in form of words. Frequent use of numbers always lead to distortion of literature, and most writers understand this fact though they usually assume that the distortion will not be noticed. Consequently, they continue using more and more numbers in their writings, which often act as a big challenge to genuine writers and readers and does not promote quality writings. However, since it is difficult to control the use of numbers in writing as there are no well laid-up guidelines, it is important for readers to ignore the numerical patterns in such writings and focus on its quality and content. From the past trend it is evident that numbers connected to a text are always changing from time to time and they are thus unreliable. This is especially common with articles in the internet especially in the social media where the likes, comments, tweets and replies among others fluctuate from time to time. In one day an article can have over a thousand responses and on another day a similar article may have less than one hundred responses. Furthermore numerical patterns relating to such issues as weather patterns, number of road accidents in a particular region and the wealth of a particular country always vary depending on the methods of measurement employed. The degree of variation may occasionally be large to the extent that if someone was to depend on the figures to make a decision he may end up making two completely different decisions. The unreliability of such figures is further increased by the fact that different people may make different inferences from the same figures depending on how one interprets them. The unreliability of numbers in a text shows that numbers should generally be viewed to be indifferent in order to avoid the above shortcomings. In conclusion, it is evident that the current generation should at least pretend to be indifferent about the various numbers connected to a text in order to avoid the deception that is usually portrayed by numbers. This will be instrumental in ensuring that articles are published based on their quality and not on the numbers they generate as it has been the case. Therefore, if the habit of assuming to ignore the numbers is embraced there will be a corresponding improvement in the quality and relevance of articles published. Work cited Marche, Stephen. "The Act of Writing in the Age of Numbers." Los Angeles Times. 18 Apr. 2015. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. < http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-marche-numbers-20150419-story.html#page=1 >. Read More