I'm not a big numbers guy. I liked math OK when I was in school, but it never became an overriding passion. I find some statistics interesting and helpful—things like batting averages—because they can give a general statement (Red Sox slugger Dustin Pedroia had a hell of a year at the plate) some mathematic exactitude (Pedroia hit .326 in 2008).
Numbers can be fun, helpful, edifying. But I certainly was never seduced by any strain of numerology that divines a relationship between numbers and specific objects, people or events. I have a few numbers that I like better than others—I prefer even numbers; my favorite number is 24 and I like numbers that can be evenly divided by 12—but that's about it. Well, almost.
Perhaps because I was alive in 1968, because I've since seen that particularly complicated year given special status by political pundits and social historians, I've come to view all the years that end in eight—in fact, the ninth year of each decade—as special turning points in history. No doubt my view is colored by personal experience: in 1978, I graduated high school, started college, turned 18, had my first legal drink in Boston.
Was 1978 an historically significant year? That year, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping reversed Mao-era policies to pursue a program for Chinese economic reform; Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat began the peace process at Camp David; Sadat and Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving a Middle East accord.
In Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives; in San Francisco, Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated by former Supervisor Dan White; Dianne Feinstein succeeded Moscone as San Francisco's first woman mayor; President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that raised the age of retirement for American workers from 65 to 70; on television, Dallas premiered on CBS; in medicine, the first test-tube baby was born.
Whether or not there's any special significance to the years that end in eight—I'll leave it to you to check out the events of 1988 and 1998 on Wikipedia—there can be no doubt that 2008 was, by any measure, a remarkable and historic year. It was a year in which a lot of bad things happened: the continuing war in Iraq, mounting violence in other parts of the Middle East; the near-collapse of the U.S. and world economy; soaring gas prices and record profit-taking by Big Oil—but also a year in which unimaginably good things happened, none better than the election of Barack Obama.
In 2008, numbers mattered.
As the year began, President Bush's approval rating hovered in the mid-30s. By the week before the election, Bush's approval rating had dropped into the low 20s, where it remains.
The Dow Jones Average opened the year at 12,800 and hit its 52-week low of 7,449 in November. (At press time, the Dow was 8,515.)
The year began with the unemployment rate in the United States at 4.9 percent; by the end of November, it had risen steadily to 6.7 percent.
For all the gloomy numbers throughout the year, including gasoline prices busting $4 per gallon, the cost of the Iraq War reaching more than $1 billion per day and the cost of bailing out the U.S. financial industry by more than $700 billion, there have been some cheery numbers—the result, at least in part, of so much bad news.
The best number I can think of is 365—the number of electoral votes won by Obama in his landslide victory over John McCain. (I'll wait to crow about the Democrats' gains in the House and Senate until the counting is done, but the numbers look good.) But there were subtler signs of positive change to be found. Since, for example, gasoline prices reached their peak in July, demand for petroleum in the United States has fallen from 9.4 million to 8.8 million barrels a day.
Was 2008 a turning point in history? I hope so. Here are a few numbers I'll look to for confirmation: the minimum wage as of Dec. 31, 2009 and the median household income; government spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Spending; the number of U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
