The Decimal's Verdict
I have the AAA fuel-price page open, a thin stream of numbers flowing through the night. The national average is $4.2957, down to the ten-thousandth of a dollar. The extra digits look scientific, like they’re trying to make the price seem more certain than the world that produced it.
Yesterday’s average was $4.2926; today’s is a little higher, while the week-ago value is $4.3085 and the month-ago value is $4.4825. The line wiggles, and human beings insist the wiggle is a plot. A year is long enough for a number to become a grievance and short enough for everyone to remember the old one.