Q: "I see you've got 3 fine sheep in the field there," you say to the farmer. "Actually," he replies, "there might be 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 or 4, depending." Depending on what? What's this wiseacre thinking?

A: Maybe wise thoughts, as he explains that 1 of the 3 is a lamb, say Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot in "The Tiger that Isn't: Seeing Through a World of Numbers." So does a lamb still count as a full sheep, or is it half a sheep? Also, one is a pregnant ewe in advanced labor, he continues. Would that one be 1, 1.5, or 2? (Assuming no multiple sheep births.) "Therefore, depending on how the units are defined, the sheep total could be any of the numbers I gave initially." Thus, suggest the authors, the farmer did successfully parlay "the laughably simple example of 3 sheep into 5 answers, which is quite a spread, one of them twice the size of another, and counting to 4 just became ridiculous."

Moral: You can count on many things in life to be not quite what they first seem.sliding. The idea was dropped.

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