I didn't say numbers were necessary, people can learn an awful lot of contortions to achieve things. I said more like: given two devices which let you know the

I didn't say numbers were necessary, people can learn an awful lot of contortions to achieve things. I said more like: given two devices which let you know the time, one needs you to imagine a ring of natural numbers, identify which number the short hand just passed, and identify which number the long hand just passed and multiply it by five and then guesstimate how many 6-degree increments it has moved since then and add that on, then adjust for whether the short hand said "12" and it's night time or not; the other has the time written out and you can read it, the former is not the more practical one. Given how much we read numbers in everyday life, we have more practise at reading numbers and it requires fewer steps. Analogue clock faces are only really used for time, we do that less often and it requires more work. How could it be quicker?