Number, which obliterates all distinction between the units numbered, is not the only, nor always even the most exact means of representing quantitative facts.

A picture, for instance, may be sometimes nearer to quantitative truth, more easily remembered and more useful for purposes of argument and verification than a row of figures.
The most exact quantitative political document that I ever saw was a set of photographs of all the women admitted into an inebriate home.

The photographs demonstrated, more precisely than any record of approximate measurements could have done, the varying facts of physical and nervous structure.

It would have been easily possible for a committee of medical men to have arranged the photographs in a series of increasing abnormality, and to have indicated the photograph of the 'marginal' woman in whose case, after allowing for considerations of expense, and for the desirability of encouraging individual responsibility, the State should undertake temporary or permanent control.

And the record was one which no one who had ever seen it could forget.
The political thinker has indeed sometimes to imitate the cabinet-maker, who discards his most finely divided numerical rule for some kinds of specially delicate work, and trusts to his sense of touch for a quantitative estimation.