A more serious objection—then and now—is that expressing a probability estimate with a number may imply to the reader that it is an objective fact, not the subjective judgment it is. That is a danger. But the answer is not to do away with numbers. It’s to inform readers that numbers, just like words, only express estimates—opinions—and nothing more. Similarly, it might be argued that the precision of a number implicitly says “the forecaster knows with exactitude that this number is right.” But that’s not intended and shouldn’t be inferred.
