An Obsession with Numbers:Quantifying Quality

One of the things that we learn in our early childhood is numbers: 1, 2, 3,… in our mother tongue. Subsequently, we learn the difference between zero and nonzero, about smaller and larger numbers, and about integers and non-integers. Much later we learn about negative numbers, and rational and irrational numbers. As Indians, we are proud of our Bhaskaracharya of ancient times and Srinivasa Ramanujan of recent times. Kanigel declared the latter to be the man who knew infinity.