“to put the finger on” says that somebody’s “number” has 
come up. At the extreme of the graph profiles of the 
statisticians there is the frankly expressed object of 
manipulation of population for varieties of power purposes. For 
example, in any large stockbroker’s office there is a modern 
medicine man known as “Mr. Odd Lots.” His magical function is 
to study the daily purchases and sales of the small buyers on 
the big exchanges. Long experience has revealed that these 
small buyers are wrong 80 per cent of the time. A statistical 
profile of the failure of the little man to be in touch enables the 
big operators to be about 80 per cent right. Thus from error 
comes truth; and from poverty, riches, thanks to numbers. This 
is the modern magic of numbers. The more primitive attitude 
toward the magical power of numbers appeared in the dread of 
the English when William the Conqueror numbered them and 
their chattels in what the folk called the Doomsday Book.