This is a bit more heavy-handed than I might like, but it does appear to
do the right things:
* accepts numeric input appropriately, truncating floats
* matches string input against a regex, then coerces number-looking
strings to int
* makes a best effort to coerce anything else to a string, then subjects
it to the same treatment
* raises an error in the event of incorrect number of arguments or
non-number-looking strings