If you think you can’t do numbers, beware. This column is about numbers.

But it reveals that you are not alone; many people, including some we rely on, can’t do numbers either.

We attach great importance to conclusions supported by numbers. Whether it’s about elections or employment, if there’s a number involved, we often accept it as reliable and authoritative and not merely a matter of opinion. That can be a mistake.

Take last week’s unemployment report. The media stressed that the number of new jobs in April was well below the economic forecast. One outlet even congratulated itself for having foreseen that “April was not going to be a jobs boom, but instead, a jobs bust.” An estimated 266,000 new jobs is “a bust?”

Conventional wisdom began to question if the economic recovery was slipping or the stimulus was a flop. Optimism could swing to pessimism based on a solitary number that supposedly reported that fewer new jobs were created than had been forecast.

The media reported that the employment numbers fell below the expectations of “most economists.” Obviously, that was not true given the hundreds of thousands of economists, most of whom weren’t asked. Who chose the economists whose opinions were used? Are they qualified? Biased?

Even if they were objective, does averaging the opinions of a relative handful of economists produce a gold standard jobs forecast?

Then, there’s the monthly report on new jobs and the unemployment rate. It is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a federal government agency that enjoys a good reputation for being competent and staying out of politics.

The BLS does not count each individual. It uses surveys that, nine times out of ten, will be accurate within a range of possible results. Could this be the tenth time? And the width of the range in the BLS surveys could be larger than either the change in the number of jobs or the monthly variation in the unemployment rate.

Political leaders and the public don’t know exactly just how many jobs were created or how good the base forecast was. Because the same process is used every month, perhaps the best we can do is make an educated guess that some jobs were created, but fewer than in the previous month.

The employment results could raise questions about any new jobs legislation. National policy may change as a result of one month’s rough statistical finding, which flies in the face of all those “help wanted” signs we are seeing. We are reading too much into the numbers.

If he really believes that he won the presidential election, Donald Trump is a victim of reading too little into the numbers. The numbers here are individually counted votes, not the result of a survey. But they don’t seem logical to him, so he assumes they must result from massive cheating.

Trump received more popular votes than any other candidate for president ever, except for Joe Biden, who now sits in the White House. Trump must find it hard to accept that the huge voter turnout helped Republican congressional candidates, but not him.

Mainly because of the coronavirus, states allowed for increased absentee voting. Trump believes that Biden’s huge vote is out of line and that absentee voting created the attractive conditions for cheating on his behalf. He also supports a few more fanciful causes to dispute the result.

That’s Trump’s logic, despite the fact that all the independent reviews show that there was no cheating that could have changed the result. Republican election officials certified Biden’s votes.

The increased number of voters can readily be explained. The total population and the number of people of voting age increases with each election. This time, with opinions sharply divided, it looks like more young people and women chose to participate.

Believing only the numbers that support your expectation and ignoring those that don’t is called “confirmation bias.” Most charitably, that’s what has happened to Trump. He believed in the inevitability of his reelection and accepts only numbers favorable to that view.

If only Trump’s results make sense, Biden must have cheated. That reasoning is enough and no solid evidence is needed. None was produced.

Even if Trump is sincere, though misguided, his selective use of numbers endangers the democratic system of popular control by his prolonged attempt to undermine confidence in it.

Numbers can help in understanding what’s happening and when. They can identify trends, though not on a daily basis as some polls do. But, if viewed uncritically, they can provide a false sense of certainty.

Public attitudes and activities are influenced by actions, events and opinions. Numbers can be helpful in getting at the truth, but they are not the only thing that counts.

Gordon L. Weil formerly wrote for the Washington Post and other newspapers, served on the U.S. Senate and EU staffs, headed Maine state agencies and was a Harpswell selectman.