Statistics - not just a number....

I am sitting in my study snowed under with work - preparing my cross examination for tomorrow and so I really should not be sneaking time to type postings on my blog, however brief. And sadly (or perhaps happily for those who have to read my missives) this will indeed be brief as I have justified to myself this indulgence on the basis that it is a short and refreshing break from the cerebral intensity that cross examination preparation sometimes demands of me!

I have found myself unusually buoyed in the exhaustive and determined focus that I find critical cross examination preparation exacts from this mortal mind, and suddenly found myself wondering what this unusual happy excitement might be? And when I stopped to think about it, I knew immediately that these happy feelings cruising alongside my thoughts about my work were about my blog! I have always been passionate about everything I decide to do, and my blog is my new raison d'être! I find myself comforted by its existence just in knowing it is 'there', I guess, much like a parted couple are comforted knowing their lover is somewhere in the world, and 'theirs' though not 'there'. And to continue the syrupy analogy, my logging in at the end of the day is as exciting as the hug of the lovers reunited in the Virgin trains advert!

And best of all is that my new passion is not just (and some may say my usual!) love affair with myself! Statistics are a wonderful thing if they are positive as they are hateful if they are not - love 'em or hate 'em is funnily enough something I have heard said about myself, although at least I am not just a statistic. Yet!

Anyway, I have been thrilled to my little toes to see that I have had over 2000 views of my blog in the short few weeks that it has been up and running. And in my case this is particularly gratifying because I deliver postings for a living - the spoken rather than the written, admittedly. But the jurors who have listened to my countless speeches over the 18 years I have been making them have been forced to hear them. There is, no doubt, a pleasure in making a closing speech to a jury. In fact, I can confidently say that it has been the greatest rush I have ever experienced and an experience unequalled by anything else I have managed to do in my life. But starting this blog has made me realise there is something even more rewarding......and that is to have people listen (or read in the case of a blog) to what you have to say, not because they have to, but because they want to!

And so although I only have time this evening to say a huge 'thank you' to those who have ventured to read my contributions to our global consciousness, it is important for me to do so. If whatever you have read has in some way enriched or contributed to your thoughts about yourself or your world then that is just fabulous.

But even if you have thought that what you have read of my postings are completely unremarkable and a waste of your time, I am still grateful, because you are an important static, or at least a contributor to it.

On reflection, although I earlier insisted I was at least not a statistic yet, I suppose we all are in one way or another in this data driven world. The important thing, I have learned from starting this blog, is not to feel like one yourself. Its great to feel able to metaphorically shout like that chap in some advert 'I am not a number!' Because to say something that counts to a reader is to add to the sum of what he is in a way that mathematics or statistics will never achieve. A counting not predicated upon the immutability of a number but free to be valued by the regard you have for it, which in itself is neither calculable nor predictable.

And so I say thank you to all you statistics who are not statistics! In truth its not your number that counts to me, but that I may have in a small way counted to some of you.

That's countless.