I think the numbers are much better than nothing and much better than any substitute that currently exists, and I'm not aware of a better design or a great way to deemphasize them while preserving their value.

Edit: like, they convey a lot of real info, and more conservative alternatives would fail to do so.

A quick take from me (I did some of the design on the site, though Ray did most of it): I think the numbers are helpful for organizing the content into meaningful categories, and helps people figure out where the interesting content is. Otherwise you would be dealing with a huge amount of prose. I currently think the numbers/table is a pretty decent way to get a sense of what the content is, and where it makes sense to pay attention to (usually the places where there is the most variance in numbers across a category, or where scores are particularly low or high).