The number is their arbitrary summary of the "facts" contained in the report for easy digestion. If you feed in the same facts to the algorithm over and over, y

The number is their arbitrary summary of the "facts" contained in the report for easy digestion. If you feed in the same facts to the algorithm over and over, you'll get the same number over and over. Notably, the number has no intrinsic value -- every lender everywhere uses it to score creditworthiness, yes, but it's the lenders who do that. The agencies give them a number and say "do what you will with this information." I'm the first in line to say the system is horribly broken. I spent years cleaning up inaccuracies on my reports in order to buy a house. Credit reporting is opaque, unfair, and inaccuracies are nearly impossible to correct. It's what makes me wary of automation controlling everything -- manual underwriting used to be a thing, but now almost all of it is automated based on arbitrary numbers and reports that may or may not be true, with no good way to ensure accuracy.