A Society of Number Crunchers

Let’s look at the math: David Letterman’s top 10 list, a weeknight tradition for well over a decade. Peter Jennings’ “The Century,” first a book, now a TV miniseries about the last hundred years.

Then there’s the new millennium, no sponsor yet, but some believe Beelzebub will eventually rule the new era. Even without an official backer, 2000 is still a topic people can’t seem to read, write and scream enough about.

And finally, last Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed over 10,000, prompting money managers, stockbrokers and 401(k) contributors to prance around singing “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit’ It.”

Judging by the reaction, you might think those nice, neat numbers possessed the same natural power over people as 100 degrees Celsius does over boiling water. But the fact is those round numbers that generate so much ink and air time are bankrupt of any intrinsic value.

Even the Dow cracking 10,000 “isn’t that significant,” said Alan “Ace” Greenberg, chairman of the New York brokerage firm Bear, Stearns & Co., on CNBC last week. “It’s just 30 stocks, [and] the rest are having trouble.”

So, what is behind Americans’ apparent numbers obsession?

From a mathematician’s standpoint, there are 10 good reasons that society feels comfortable with numbers that are multiples of 10.

“We’re all deca-crats because we have 10 fingers,” said John Allen Paulos, a mathematics professor at Temple University. “If we had eight fingers, we’d probably be hung up on the number 8.”

Of course, Paulos points out, nice round numbers do serve a very useful purpose, even if they aren’t very precise. For instance, you may not know the exact population of the United States, but you probably know it’s roughly 265 million.

“It’s important to be able to deal with quantities in a rough sort of way,” Paulos said. Otherwise, he added, we’d all be bogged down by minutiae.

Ten fingers may have laid the foundation for a numbers fancy, say historians, but the brain and its unknowable inner workings built the rest. While cultures have always honored the passage of time with arbitrary markers, the practice greatly intensified in the 20th century, historians say.

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The dizzying pace of change--technological, social and political--simply overwhelmed people in this century, argue historians. From the first airplane flight to the first walk on the moon, from a globe dotted with villages to a global village, people in this century have struggled to make sense of it all.

The faster the pace of life became, the greater the need became to break it down into manageable chunks, say historians. It was only in this century that people gave names to decades, like the Roaring ‘20s or the Greedy ‘80s. Before that, periods of time were usually referred to by historical events or trends, such as the Reconstruction Era or the Gilded Age.

Thus, by dividing up time by decades--and other arbitrary numbers--society achieved a comforting sense of control over the chaos, historians say.

“People simply need milestones and rituals,” said Paulos, author of several books, including “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.”

The number fixation, too, can be traced to America’s drive to become a meritocracy, argue others. Before merit, people’s identities were determined chiefly by bloodlines, wealth and religion, according to James B. Twitchell, an English professor at the University of Florida who has written extensively about pop culture.

But as the old identities faded away, society developed a minor identity crisis, contends Twitchell. The question then became what would be our new shared values, he said.

Part of the answer was bestowing meaning on numbers, which in reality have none. Anyone who has argued over the American Film Institute’s 100 greatest films or has run in a 10K race has strengthened society’s desire for neat numbers.

“All cultures have to have places to meet,” said Twitchell. “So, we’ve generated a family of numbers to help us get there. They really enable us to establish community values, and to come together as a culture.

“It’s a manufactured reality,” he said, “but we need these sort of devices.”

Oddly, the numbers game carries with it an element of self-deception. Whether consciously or not, most people realize the numbers are arbitrary but still cheer the top 10 list or the beginning of a new century.

Twitchell says this curious human response reminds him of a story about 19th century entertainer P.T. Barnum, reputed to have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Barnum had opened a museum of freaks and natural oddities, which was so popular it was difficult getting people to leave the exhibits. Nothing Barnum did seemed to hurry the folks out the door.

Finally, Barnum replaced the “Exit” signs with ones that read “This Way to Egress.” This did indeed speed people out the door. But when they realized “egress” was Latin for “exit,” they weren’t upset as they might have been, said Twitchell.

“They weren’t mad,” Twitchell said. “They were somehow pleasured at being fooled.”

Times staff writer Martin Miller can be reached by e-mail at martin.miller@latimes.com.