Cameron distinguishes what can be measured from what matters. His wordplay turns on two meanings of “counts”: being included in a numerical total and having significance. Information does not become useful simply because it is easy to quantify, while something important may not be adequately represented by a number.

In the surrounding passage, he discusses the evidence sociologists need to understand social life. When numerical data are insufficient, researchers can draw on observation and people’s spoken or written accounts. These approaches can reveal aspects of experience that counting alone misses.

He also warns that non-quantitative evidence depends on fallible observers, whose perceptions and memories may be unreliable. The point is therefore not to reject statistics or treat personal accounts as unquestionable. It is to choose methods suited to the question, distinguish numerical precision from relevance, and recognise that both measurements and interpretations require scrutiny.

Full quotation

“It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Often we must use non-quantitative methods, and there are really only two: you can get data by looking and drawing your own conclusions as to what you have seen; or you can get data from other people’s verbal reports, oral or written, about what they think they have seen. Unfortunately the data are never any better than the people who see them. Whole books have been devoted to complaints about the strange ways in which human beings perceive, forget, and remember; but people are human and there is not much that can be done about it. If this disturbs you, perhaps you should quit sociology and take up white rats, viruses, or electrons.”