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People tend to think that numbers are quite objective, but numbers in economics are not like this. Some economists say they're like sausages: you don't know what they really are until you cut into them.

— Ha-Joon Chang

Sentiment: NEGATIVE

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✓Similar Perspectives

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

— Plato

Economics is a strange science. Our subject deals with some of the most important as well as mundane issues that impinge on the human condition.

— Dale T. Mortensen

Journalists ask me all the time, 'Akshay, do you believe in the numbers game?' My standard response: 'I can't count, that's why I have producers and accountants who calculate for me. As long as I have them in my life, I don't need to worry about numbers!'

— Akshay Kumar

Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next.

— Gregory Bateson

The reality is that a person who has always struggled with numbers is unlikely to be a great accountant or statistician.

— Tom Rath

Economics is mostly how humans rationalize who gets what and why. It's how we instantiate our preferences about status, privileges, and power.

— Nick Hanauer

I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

— Koren Zailckas

Economics is not an exact science. It's a combination of an art and elements of science. And that's almost the first and last lesson to be learned about economics: that in my judgment, we are not converging toward exactitude, but we're improving our data bases and our ways of reasoning about them.

— Paul Samuelson

The value of having numbers - data - is that they aren't subject to someone else's interpretation. They are just the numbers. You can decide what they mean for you.

— Emily Oster

✗Opposing Perspectives

I mean it's the most objective industry in the world. If your numbers stink, you're out. If your numbers are good, you get more money. It's the most Darwinian, it's beautiful, it's brutal, it works.

— Jim Cramer