So simple its complicated

When we talk about changing the way numbers work on computers, people get the impression that we’re talking higher mathematics.  Number theory?  Fuzzy logic?  Actually, we are talking about something much simpler.  So simple in fact that it can be hard to grasp, and even harder to accomplish, but once you get the idea, you wonder why it took so long to be addressed.

When you pass a sign that says “55 mph”, that’s a number.  A number with units we commonly understand to measure velocity.  Furthermore, we understand that it refers to us: our cars moving past on the road.   More precisely, it is saying “the maximum allowed speed of your car = 55 mph” and because it’s on the highway, we assume it was put there by proper authorities, adding another fact to what that sign implies.

Using our computers in our daily work, we encounter and produce numbers all the time.   As with the speed limit sign, there is a lot of information surrounding these numbers that make them meaningful, and which isn’t always expressed clearly, or even expressed at all.    We might have to read a whole paragraph, or scan for heading of rows and columns in spreadsheets to interpret a string of digits we’re looking at.  Even then we often have questions about a number that aren’t easily answered.  Is it the right one?  Who came up with it?  Is it still the right number?

Our simple notion is that by making a more formal package, kind of like a URL, that still looks like a number, can be used almost anywhere, but that carries with it everything we need to understand a number clearly, we can make numbers much more useful and powerful.

We call these “truenumbers”.  Making numbers better in this way is a small thing and a simple idea in some ways, but on the other hand, because numbers are so important to our work and daily communication, a little bit of improvement can go a very long way.

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