I thought I wasn’t someone given to numbers. What always interested me was how we interpreted these numbers, statistics. After all, aren’t facts a matter of interpretation? Do they even exist unless we put meaning into them?

But I got deeply influenced by numbers and size, both big and small, ever since I started digging into Bill Bryson’s writings. I do not know how other readers read him. But with me, each fact told through a number/size was a revelation of its own kind. It often felt as if the truckloads of information Bill dug out through mind-numbing research made my mind hurtle towards one deeper realisation: we humans know so little about our own bodies! Well, almost nothing.

This post will fall miserably short if I get down to describing what I exactly mean by that. I would rather take you through a few of them that prompted this post. Continue reading →