Figures can be deceiving. For example, Times Magazine recently reported that the average Yale graduate of the class of 1944 was making $35,111 a year. Well, good for them! But what exactly does that figure mean? Is it proof that, if you send your child to Yale, you won’t have to work in your old age and neither will he? What kind of sample is it based on? You could put one Texas oilman with two hundred hungry writers and report their average income as $35,111 a year . The figure is exact, but it has no meaning. In ways similar to this, the facts and figures pour out every day. They are used to point out the truth, when in fact they confuse and over-simplify the truth . The result is “ number nonsense ”.