Numberwang

English

Alternative forms

• numberwang

Etymology

number +‎ wang, from a 2006 That Mitchell and Webb Look comedy sketch about a nonsensical game show in which contestants shout random numbers and the host replies "That's Numberwang!"

Noun

Numberwang (uncountable)

1. (UK, slang) A situation involving a bewildering succession of numbers.
   • 2020 February 24, Greg Bottrill, School and the Magic of Children, SAGE, →ISBN, page 54:

     Out of the window went the idea that perhaps children are humans with emotions and background and psyche and dream, and instead in rushed labelling and tracking and spreadsheets and monitoring and failure and rapid progress and interventions and scores and you-can-but-you-over-there-can't, and here's a test and here's another one and, oh, here's another one, and all the time in this great big educational Numberwang comes one thing, sneaking in inside the Trojan Horse of accountability: FEAR.

   • 2021 April 5, David Broome, Little Fella, eBook Partnership, →ISBN:

     Only English (180) and French (55) players have won more than their 29 titles, with more Brazilian players (16) having won the Premier League than Irish (five), Welsh (four), Scottish (four) and Northern Irish (two) put together. That's numberwang!

   • 2023 August 17, Michael Blastland, Thinking in Pictures: Adventures in Trying to be Smart, Atlantic Books, →ISBN:

     But there is a partial antidote to this numberwang, and it's context, which locates numbers in our world, the human world. Quite simply, it's what brings them to life, and once they are alive and less abstract, we can make better sense of them.

   • 2023 November 28, Bethsheba Ashe, Behold!: The Art and Practice of Gematria, Aeon Books, →ISBN:

     When viewed through a severely skeptical monocle it can look like occult numberwang. At that time, gematria appeared to me to be little more than a form of numerology.

2. (UK, slang) The manipulation of statistics.
   • 2010 September 1, Grant Goddard, DAB Digital Radio: Licensed To Fail, Radio Books, →ISBN, page 4:

     Digital Radio Working Group: It must be Numberwang !

   • 2020 January 4, Karen Nelson-Field, The Attention Economy and How Media Works: Simple Truths for Marketers, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 26:

     So, as you consider the four million must-read insight pieces that come across your desk tomorrow (again perhaps a slight numberwang), consider whether their insights would last as long as Vitruvius or Ehrenberg's advice.

   • 2024 April 11, Ian Acheson, Screwed: Britain's Prison Crisis and How to Escape It, Biteback Publishing, →ISBN:

     At a time when the prison population was at an all-time high of over 85,000, a new operational structure was imposed – with the full endorsement of the biggest union, the Prison Officers' Association (POA) – that divested frontline supervisors of managerial responsibility, made them essentially mobile across prison establishments instead of being tied to a wing and provided a voluntary exit package for experienced staff. That's Numberwang!