The tree counted twice

Text: an original contemporary local-report-style practice extract.

The leaflet announced that volunteers had planted fifty new trees. I had helped enter the records, so I recognised the total. I also recognised the slender cherry tree beside the gate. Two teams had submitted its details, one using the gate as its location and the other using the name of the adjoining street.

We checked the entries against photographs. The cherry appeared twice, but two other photographs showed saplings that had not been entered at all. Correcting one mistake did not simply mean subtracting one. We needed to decide which record belonged to which tree, and that required walking the site with the people who had planted them. The number on the leaflet was easier to print than the question behind it was to settle.

The next leaflet gave a revised total and explained that the register had been checked. I do not suspect that the volunteers meant to inflate their work. They had been busy planting, photographing and carrying water. Their useful work deserved an account that could survive being examined, rather than a confident figure left to borrow certainty from its own large type.

In this extract, the writer tries to show that a confident total can conceal uncertainty.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.