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I have always been fascinated with numbers. I log my daily weight and running mileage. In October 2016, I posted a Blog on Twin Primes. You can still be the first to like it. It generated one sarcastic comment from my eldest son. The electronic age of social media is amazing because we now have official mathematical measures of how much we are liked and followed and we can influence those numbers. In my youth, popularity was tracked by anecdotal data like how fast your dance card filled up. As a high school freshman, my conduct was measured by a demerit card where students progressed through detentions to suspension as faculty members checked off various violations. That was the only Scavenger Hunt I ever won. Intelligence measurements were more precise but still flawed, e.g., IQs, grade point averages, and SAT scores. Athletics always had the purest reliance on raw numbers which doomed my biggest weakness to public exposure. I longed most for success in sports. We always crave what we do not have. If I traded some intelligence for more athleticism, I would undoubtedly regret it like characters who sell their souls to the devil. Despite being the type of person who loves a number culture, I always recognized myself as oddly obsessed. Now I am relieved, incredulous, and disappointed all at the same time to discover how consumed everyone seems to be with Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and WordPress likes. You can do anything with statistics. Donald Trump is numerically more liked than me to an overwhelming degree but he is also more hated. Most people know likes and followers do not adequately measure the quality of creative works or the worth of a person. Could someone calculate the exact number of people who know this?

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