Especially in investing. Rule Breaking investors may tend to be much less focused on numbers than other kinds of investors, but numbers still matter. After all, it's probably not a good idea for anyone to be invested purely in Rule Breakers. These are risky beasts, you know. But back to digits, as I want to offer some thoughts on them.
Numbers can be very misleading, depending on how they're used and presented.
Scruffy's is clearly increasing its earnings sharply from year to year. If 1996 earnings were a record, then each of the following years' earnings were records, as well. Know that without more information, this isn't terribly informative. It makes a large difference. Another example of a number you have to be careful about is an annualized rate of growth.