It may be correctly interpreted if sent in response to a specific request, and received at the time and in the form expected. This correct interpretation does not depend only on the number itself, which could represent almost any of millions of types of quantitative measurement, rather it depends strictly on the circumstances of transmission. That is, the interpretation depends on both systems expecting that the algorithms in the other system use the number in exactly the same sense, and it depends further on the entire envelope of transmissions that preceded the actual transmission of the bare number.