KEY POINTS:
We;ve all heard about lies, damned lies and statistics, but numbers are neutral. It all depends on how we use them and how we interpret them. Take the following:
4.8 trillion: The combined value, in New Zealand dollars, of the US Government's various bailout packages.
382: The number of points Wall St fell after US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled a $3.6 trillion plan to prop up banks and resuscitate the credit markets. Apparently, the prime beneficiaries of this largesse - and prime suspects in the crisis that prompted it - regard it as too little, too late.
567: The number of shops operated by Circuit City, the US' second largest electronics retailer. The 60-year-old company has gone bankrupt, putting 40,000 people out of work.
19.2 million: The amount of money investment guru Bernie Madoff's wife withdrew from a brokerage he part-owned a few hours before he confessed that his legendary hedge fund was a monumental scam.
109: The fall, in US dollars, in the price of oil since it peaked at $147 last July.
7 million: The number of Zimbabweans who survive on international food aid. Last year Zimbabwe's population was estimated at 11.3 million but there's been a lot of Aids, malnutrition, cholera, political murder and emigration since then.
4000: The number of portions of caviar needed for Robert Mugabe's 85th birthday party, according to a Zanu-PF party letter soliciting donations from what remains of the corporate sector.
8: The percentage of global GDP controlled by drug syndicates, according to Johann Hari writing in the Independent. If even roughly correct, this makes the syndicates far more powerful entities than most sovereign nations.
84.6 billion: The annual cost to the US Government of the criminalisation of recreational drugs, according to Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron.
62.7 billion: Miron's estimate of the amount of revenue the US Government would receive if drugs were legalised and taxed like alcohol.
5400: The number of drug-related murders in Mexico last year. Tijuana has officially overtaken Baghdad as the world's most dangerous city.
528 million: The value of baseball player Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez's 10-year contract with the New York Yankees.
156: The number of home runs Rodriguez hit - out of a career total of 553 - during the three years he was using performance-enhancing steroids.
0: The length of time, in minutes, of Rodriguez's suspension.
3: The number of months for which swimmer Michael Phelps has been suspended for being photographed smoking the performance-detracting drug marijuana at a university party.
8: The number of people arrested in relation to the presence of marijuana at the same party.
3: The number of years spent in a detention centre by Spanish game show contestant Cyril Jacquet, who gunned down his parents when he was 15. Because he was a minor, under Spanish law he has no criminal conviction.
38: The number of known extramarital liaisons engaged in by the former Chief Constable of Manchester, Michael Todd, who last year froze to death on a Welsh mountainside under the influence of sleeping pills, gin and, understandably, stress. His lovers included five fellow officers and staff, a prominent businesswoman and a token poet. An inquiry headed by another chief constable found no evidence "that these relationships adversely affected the day-to-day discharge of his duties", which suggests the investigators were as distracted as Chief Constable Todd. His diary belongs in the National Gallery because it must surely be a work of art.
One in 25: The number of children whose legal fathers are blissfully unaware that they're not their real fathers, according to recent chromosome analysis undertaken in Britain. Folk wisdom had put the figure at one in 10.
150: The number of years which have elapsed since the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. This week the Vatican conceded that Darwin was probably on to something with this evolution business, thereby implicitly rejecting the "theory" of intelligent design which can be summarised as Creationism ("In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth") only slower.
45: The percentage of Americans who apparently believe the world is less than 10,000 years old.
60 million: The age of a gigantic snake fossil discovered in a coal mine in Colombia.
500: The number of atomic bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima that it would take to generate the energy equivalent of the Victorian bushfires.
