我推想，在这些用法里，凡是出现number的地方都可以用thing来替代而不改变原意，比如：a hot thing, rolling a thing, doing a thing。

I'm speculating when I say that I think all these USES are using the word number where the sense of "thing" applies: a hot thing, rolling a thing, doing a thing.

youdao

在这些极为常用的地方，用户很大程度上都使用自己的设备来配置远程显示，然后在下次需要时就可以重做相同的工作。

In these too-common places, users are largely left to their own devices to configure remote displays — then redo the same work the next time there's a need.

youdao

你可以在家中或办公室里摆放植物，用它们来改善空气质量，使这些地方成为更舒适的生活与工作场所——人们在这儿感觉更好，办事效率更高，更多地享受生活。

You can use plants in your home or office to improve the quality of the air to make it a more pleasant place to live and work where people feel better, perform better, and enjoy life more.

youdao

I can use that to return values, which I can then use elsewhere, which I did-- and if I just come back and highlight this-- inside of that computation.

我可以用它来返回值，然后我可以在别的地方使用这些返回值，正是我做的--如果我回过头来,在高亮一下这个--在这部分计算内部。

麻省理工公开课 - 计算机科学及编程导论课程节选