I would like to start this interview by talking a little bit about you. I would also like to have the audience in story. Like frankly really offended me which is in your introduction. Youre claiming that she would never be a political scientist. Have you ever read about that. I put that in the book because when i was in college. Deborah i wanted to major must consume in College Freedom is really torn about going into science and humanities printer special scientists. And i finally decided on this because i found the questions much more interesting and engaging an urgent. And in one of my Political Science course, we read plato on up and they were all great questions. What is Good Government greatest how could you organize government and organize society make life better for people are encouragingly make us better. Soy ended up to decide to be a Political Science major. Of course. And i already had kind of a lack of confidence as a humanist or social scientists because i didnt get very good grades in those courses. So its kind of a dilemma. I didnt even remember what the paper was on. The only remember the grade and other things. This is an incredible effort. I actually really loved it because i wrote a book myself. One of the reasons, and a similar dilemma. One of the things i realized in middle school was being taught about things. It was like the thing that we should believe. My perspective of the native americans. So essentially, this is not at all what happened. Not even reasonable theory. It just remember that i was thinking at the time like when i first, i can be comfortable with thats when i first learned it. So i felt some kind of comfort over homes like my interest. But my interest was there. And for you i think it was the opposite. Yes. I think thats right. And also added discomfort moment with numbers which is probably what led to the interest in this book. What i took my first economic course, i remember the professor putting supply and demand curve up on the board. It is a beautiful model. And believed that everybody, even in third grade. People buy things depending on the price. In the suppliers sell things that are the point to where a buyer wants to buy it and the seller wants to sell it. The market is specific and makes everybody happy. And i thought will price is not the only thing that people decide whether or not to buy something. The professor said, thats true. But if we make this simplification, we can really get some powerful conclusions. And that just bugged the heck out of me. Thank you for the story by the way, despite when i took economics in college, i thought this is not for me. Like, is to contextual or assumptions. Like you feel pure mathematics, this is what i would be interested in. That would be fine. We agree that we have a strict down of what you might need to have. But as you just said really does bring this question which is scissor at the book, i think there is through a lot. It is the idea that when we count things, only going to repeat what you just said, give to classify them. And that is something that we humans do and whether week teacher childrens to do it. So tell us about that clasfication. And that number is and erefore. Deborah that is the key point of my book. I think that we are taught in school and even by parent whoever teaches you about accounts. Just taking a number word. You just taking number wor. But in fact, you have to decide what belongs in a group of things that youre counting. So say parent puts down a bunch of oranges and apples in front of the can. And take kathy apples pritikin ha to know how to tell an apple from an orange. Yes we taught tse rules beforehand. Before they can successfully count. And thats a simple one. Its easy how to teach kids an apple from an orange. Or to something more interesting like counting ballots in an election. Somebody has to decide. I want toount votes for the different candidates. Somedys making a decision, whats valid ballot. Does this blot, does it meet the test. Did you sign in all ofhe right places or what effort. And somebody is deciding this, who even gets to cast a ballot. His so it was and he was out. Those get made before anybody starts to tally up the number of votes. On the ballot. And you know my this for a few minutes. A very profound point. Like i have three children. We think of counting, as an exercise. What comes after two or comes up with three. Etc. But what your book is done has made me rethink that. In fact i have the easy part. The hard part is the invisible part. Where we are just asking them to categorize in the first place. Reminds me of one of my favorite things i came up with as a teenager was like, when you say hi to piece of broccoli, is that the stock is assigned back or the little floors at the end of the broccoli that say hi back. Its like a ridiculous example. But that is the kind of same thing. Is the individual, of nature in this context. Were always asking our daughters to dos what belongs it does not belong. Its very very important for another example this is in your book. Think about this a lot. For taxes. Like my friend is it an accountant. And from his perspective, people think tt tax calculation is hard. But thats really really easy. When judy cider find out what somebodys income is. Everything, you can given of this and have the sort of them in your income. What you have the income numbers, like the tax calculation is really easy laws and what does not belong. As we are constantly doing. I think its very important. You want to come up with a couple more examples for the bookrayed speech of guest please do. I kindaame to this insight when i was reading dr. Seuss for unit ive been thinking about this number stuff for a lg time. T in going to go back and see how kids count. With that moment when you get the inside about this. And i think it was accounting corporative remember it. So is one fish, two fish, blackfish bluefish. It goes on and on with him kinds of fish. It never gs food. And then in the bk that says, i facial fish, blowfish fast fish slow fish. Not one is like anoer. And tn it says go ask your mother. And i thought, i if not one is like another. How do you know that theyre all fish. How you cut them all is fish. An it made me realize, that is the problem. It is only humans, we need to group things and makes sense about the world into think about about things. And when you think about it, same thing when we teach kids words, we teach them for example, we teach them by pointing to my nose. Daddys nose. You have a new puppy, the puppies nose. And daddys nose and windows doesnt look anything alike. But the insurgent similarities that are meaningful to us adults. So we want them all under one roof. So i really think numbers, just another language for categorizing things. Cathy thats a great segue for my next series of questions. Which is like numbers are just langge. They also have this unbelievable power. And you talk about that like brilliantly with respect to scoring systems. Dont talk a little bit about the system whereby people are asked to deal their own pain the medical situation. Measure it. It and what is that even mean to measure ones pain on a scale of 1210. Deborah if youve ever had anything that is caused pain. A doctor or nse will ask you what a scale of one ten printingbout his and sometimes they will say o is hardly noticeable in tennis o the charts. And maybe i cant think anymore im going to jump out a window. First of all, im completely baffled by this question. We experience in a lot of different ways. But not like a thermometer. With numbers. So what i found very interesting about that. , about the pain scale this corporative everybody says, and find it very difficult. To put this pain and in number. And yet, the medical system keeps using it. I think it has some benefit. Pain is uncomfortable. Its just one of those experiences that is yours and yours alone. Its really impossible to communicate. If so trying to do that with the number is at least a start. So a canadian doctor, came up with things much greater way of asking people to get a handle on peoples pain or measure it. He just listen to people talking came up with about a hundred different words. To categorize pain. And most of the medical professionals, the word system is much or helpful. And allowing patients express their pain and helping the physicians understand that they feel. I think in some words, apparently single words that prison system and the clinician knows, oh that is a stomach ulcer. This is an example. So even though i think the pain scale is very problematic. Twenty bandages that it is a language. It allows people to communicate a little bit. So he said that my pain was a ten yesterday but not now. You can at least say you feel that much better. Maybe the doctor has given you some pain meds. Youre still at ten. That got to try something else. So becomes a language of communication. And may not be a very good with them. Cathy yes. It is a couple of fascinating details in that. The first one was despite how well the more contextual were language for frameworks, brilliant companies, and Insurance Companies refer to numbers. Especially because i think there are cases when they need to know how much to charge. Or maybe theres a role you should be treated for it. The doctors responsibility is to give you pain med. Thats really interesting. In some sense, had has become more quantified and somehow becomes more perspective from the insurance agency. The flipside of that which i found even more interesting, is the patient themselves, learned that rule and sort of get their own treatment by deciding what to say when what is your pain level. Can you talk about that a little bit the publication to the system. Deborah so i learned from a friend who has cancer. In the pain meds. She said to me, they dont want me to be above the five. And i said what does that mean. They try to tell you not to say about five and she said no. That means they want to give you more meds or something. Hell do something more about it. So then i talked to more people. People said they know, like a cat and mouse game. These numrs. Padilla five. Their answer is what of t next card is. Some people who are in a lot of pain often assess themselves. Because paineds make you a zombie rated they reay mess with your head and you cant think clearly. People have a lotf pain, sometimes think that i dont want to be just dped on opioids. Several of my friends told me thathey learned that when they went he is thecale, to control with the nur and the doctor would do. They didnt want the pain meds, they would say low number. I dont know. Cathy one of the things i learned from the book. Which is how much scoring system exerted a sort of pow and authority. Like if youre talking about a Public School teacher, which are book also talks about. So any of the teachers in that system like their natural reaction is to trust the numbers. So reuses trusting our scores. In her iq score. Were supposed to trust these things rated the trust is not always good. It is fascinating to see in that example you gave the pain meds. The target or the patient of the scores taking control. Its a rare. Power over the target of the score. A rare case where the targets take back the power. Would you want to talk a little bit about the teachers and scores. Deborah solis talk about power first. Just to go back to the pain thing. The reason why they are the ones scoring themselves. Thats unusual. Its like somebody elses scoring you. And having scored all of the time and being given grades. So there used to sing these scoring systems. And unfortunately, kids learn early on the greatest right. If it makes them doubt themselves. I did when i stole i got a b. No would never be in Political Science. And i dont know winally came around but its a lg story. So, numbe have this aura in a culture and being accepted. It is say what make evidencebased a databased systems. We want our decisions to be driven by research. What peopl mean nowadays by the da research is numbers. They thank you so ourbjective. And words are pushy and subje to interpretation. Quickly are. So yeah, people miss the scong systems. And they make decisions that are going to affect other peoples lives. Where they hire them or fire them. Promote them. Talk about a new book, give them insurance. Whetr or not to give them a bank loan. The example that we were both fascinated with. Is that people in education and bureaucries, wanted to make sure the teachers were nullified and producing results. So they camep with a way to measeesults. Which was testing students in reading and math. Three much. That was it. And when students spending yea and do well o this test. Resulted in distributedo the quality of the teacher. Cathyso they had a simple model. But ty developed formulas to try to sort out exactly how much the students just scored do to the teaing and how mucho extraneous factors. Likely to get learned before. Like the year before. Cathy how will they did a. The way i save as the teacher would give them credit if the students are betterthanexpected. And in itself is a mathematical model. Deborah so then, in addition to scoring people, the scoring teachers, these systems also either rewarded or penalized them on the basis of this course. Either they could get fired, whole schools will be shut down or taken over by Emergency Management or whatever. School budgets will be determined by how well the students were responding. As lifeanddeath consequences. The consequences for teachers if they got a bad score. The combination of the scoring system and the attachment of the rewards and penalties with that. Cathy net leads to the consequences. Deborah discourse in this book is that until about is that all of us, education is so much more, then how to add and subtract. And passe reading comprehension test. For now the right grammar rules. So we really, really good teacher, as one who instills curiosity in the students. An excitement about learning and confidence. That they can learn. And that they want to learn. And push them. Encourage their imagination. Those are the things that i want my kids to learn. And i want to have them learn to read and write. And so much more than that. It and the problem is these formulas for much value teacher adds to the students. Who knowledge. It may include only these narrow part of education that such a small part of it. Cathy yes, i often say this is like the idea of a teacher with the test scores is either way and sufficient concepts, that we have to go through this 12 your system. I wanted to move back to a few things that went desk and counted what is argued counted. Huntington choose one that i have here. The violence against women. When we were talking about this earlier. Im partly jesting three examples. Because i want to let people know this book is full of examples. What is canadas production or for other nations. And madisons miscalculation what is counted as a human with rights. So pick one of those if you would like to go through. And you feel very strongly principally unaccounted for an accounting sent to hartford about an is about what gets categorized. So that we can count it later. Deborah okay, and its hard to choose. I think we can come back to others. The un one is awake to measure gender violence. They had a whole bunch of committees and invited people from Different Countries. And what they wanted to do is set up indicators. To say but started that violence, is rape, murder. Those things. Beatings. Is it kicking somebody. The woman who are north america and europe had actions if they would count as violence. Ultimately they would take surveys Different Countries and ask have you experienced this or that. So it was raped, and beatings. In kicking and so on. For the things that the northern and western people came up with. So there you have a case its a question of who was in the room. It comes back to power really what counts as violence in the bangladeshi women were in the room but their definition is different so the survey gets done that will be done. Yes. It is about power will have time for questions im always looking for positive stories that looking at the context if you would. Before i talk about that i want to say a lot of people when they first hear my message they think im telling people dont trust the numbers they are no good. Thats not my message at all. It can be extremely helpful way of examples in the book. But the flint michigan water crisis is one of them. Where the city of flint switch to the source of water from the detroit reservoir. And shortly after that, people started to notice that the water smelled and tasted funny and they started you have problems andverybody knows there was a lot o lead in the water and a lot of children had lead poisong from drinking this water. But the numbers were critical to finding out what was causing the problem. It turned out the epa has standards for safe levels of lead in water and there shouldt be lead and water with the clean water act nobodyhould be using lead pipes anymore. That was 1986. Flint michigan has a lot of old Housing Stock with a lot of old pipes. And the cdc uses numbers to say how much is the safe level and anybodys blood. Of particles of lead. Yes and ey say no level is safe but above a certain level we should be concerned about five we should be concerned but we dont need to treat unti 45. So the citizens of flint invited Water Engineers to come in and test the water and he figed out right away ere was probably led in the water because of the crosion from old pipes. So he tested the water and sure enough very high levels. Michigan department had tested the water and claimed it was safe and thathere was no lead into and the way they tested it and it turned out was the told residentsts to let the water run for 30 minutes to flush the water out of the pipes. So of course they got low readings. But the water engineer did his own task and got numbers tt were very very high and then pediatrician was here and concerned as a mother of the patient and had access to all the blood lead testing working in the hospital andompared the blood levels to the kids fore the switch to the new system and after and sure enough the wall on levels wentp dramatically so those put together was the causa story the water engineer made very cvincing with the lead pipe and then it gets into people blood. Those two sets of numbers began to condemn theity for the lack of dng anything. I still feel lik the story is so often in the case that the numbers were on your side but yet you lost. I think the answer is we heard that was forgiven but somehow those real numbers like these water levels were somehow brought to the surface the power somehow was overcome. Do you know how . Two things that wereretty typical. There were few citizens and one mom in particular w knew not to trust the numbers and she insisted to bring in water samples. But sheontacted the water engineer but the citizen advocacy was one thing and she eventually got lots of moms to test their water the kid that the water engineer provided. The second ingredient is that