I like ’what is a statistic?” and “what exactly is money?”. I’m not sure how I feel about “what exactly are numbers?”, though. Quaternions are called numbers, surreal numbers are called numbers, 2-by-2 matrices with real coefficients are not called numbers, integers mod p are called numbers… It’s a messy term that doesn’t correspond to any simple territory as far as I’m aware.
I like ’what is a statistic?” and “what exactly is money?”. I’m not sure how I feel about “what exactly are numbers?”, though. Quaternions are called numbers, surreal numbers are called numbers, 2-by-2 matrices with real coefficients are not called numbers, integers mod p are called numbers… It’s a messy term that doesn’t correspond to any simple territory as far as I’m aware.