Slashdot Mirror
Is Poor Numeracy Ruining Lives?
Hugh Pickens writes "The BBC reports on how millions of people struggle to understand a payslip or a train timetable, or pay a household bill. Government figures show that almost half the working population of England have only primary school math skills, and research suggests that weak math skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness. 'We are paying for this in our science, technology and engineering industries but also in people's own ability to earn funds and manage their lives,' says Chris Humphries. He is the chairman of National Numeracy, an organization seeking to emulate the success of the National Literacy Trust, which has helped improve reading and writing standards since it was set up nearly 20 years ago. The Department for Education wants the vast majority of young people to study math up to 18 within a decade to meet the growing demand for employees with high level and intermediate math skills. 'It is simply inexcusable for anyone to say "I can't do maths,"' adds Humphries. "
Both the Today programme and the web site were demonstrating that the relevant BBC people are themselves mathematically illiterate - they go on about how people "can't do maths" but illustrate this with examples of arithmetic!
Of course everybody here will be aware that there is a difference between mathematics and arithmetic, but how to get this through to the arts graduates at the Beeb?
That's arithmetic not math!
Often either a customer or the cashier makes an arithmetic mistake and neither catches it. If the errors didnt average out over time, then I might have said something. Dont want to slow down the line.
Man is powerful because of his intelligence. The stupid should be left behind, to make room for the next stage of human evolution.
If you can't multiply / divide , you can't run a business.
If you don't know anything about combinatorix (odds), you get suckered by any form of gambling, including insurance, warranties and the stock market.
If you don't understand exponential math, you can't become wealthy.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Don't know about Numeracy - but numerology ruined my life. Fortune cookie told me 05 14 46 52 56 were my lucky numbers. I ran up huge credit card debt expecting to win the lottery with these numbers... then I found out fortune cookie didn't give me the powerball number.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
That many people are proud of their innumeracy.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The generally poor understanding of numbers on the part of others adversely affects my life as well. Not only to the extent that they make poor decisions for themselves, but from the way they make poor decisions on my behalf. Damn politicians.
43% of every dollar in the Federal budget last year was borrowed, and you're wondering if innumeracy ruins lives.
Check back in 3 years for the surprising answer!
How about the people that can't do Englishes?
The education system needs to require results not just apply time and expect education to happen due to exposure.
Life is hard; it's harder when you're stupid.
I feel like there is some man in the back of the media's heads telling them to write a story about how there is a "Growing Demand" in something to advise the youth to pursue regret.
Well if you can't do Englishs then how can you be expected to do maths?!
Seems to me it's the Department for Education is the one that "can't do maths" in this equation.
Innumeracy is what keeps the mythology of supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve alive.
Just ask anyone relying on Social Security's solvency in 20 years.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Two plus two is ten.
Shit I just caught asthma.
(In base four I'm fine!)
A large part of the problem is that if they got math at all then it was part of the track to the physical sciences (algebra -> algebra 2 -> calculus -> differential equations).
Voters who aren't in a physics-based career need math, but not the same branch of it. Statistics is critical. Understanding what correlation means and what it doesn't, what a control group is for, recognizing sample bias, and definitely the base rate fallacy are all vital for resisting propaganda.
Sheesh. Numeracy is as easy as 1, 2, 4.
My eldest son is a whiz- he's a couple years ahead and should get through AP Calculus and Stats by the time he gets through HS.
On the other hand we adopted 5 girls from foster care and it is a STRUGGLE. I don't know how much of it is organic (all of them were exposed to drugs/alcohol in utero) and how much of it is early formative, but they all have incredible difficulty making the most basic inference or deduction or story problem. I'm really concerned for them because I forsee them potentially running into the roadblocks referenced by the article summary. But there are in fact SOME excuses for saying "I can't do maths." Some people may never be able to master the basics no matter how hard they try.
Not to say we are in any manner giving up. They get extra tutoring at school and spend hours doing homework, despite being in elementary school, but different people have different top levels of achievement and sometimes that level is below what any of us would like.
"...'It is simply inexcusable for anyone to say "I can't do maths,"
It is also simply inexcusable for people to live well beyond their means riddled with massive amounts of pointless debt, but let's go ahead and blame calculus for the reason most people are flat-ass broke, living paycheck to paycheck. Lord knows we wouldn't want to offend anyone by telling them they SUCK at saying "no".
People who have bad properties in some regard are more likely to have bad properties in other regards as well. Fat, uneducated, short life span, illiterate, innumerate, all related. Misery loves company.
This is one of a series of articles where I've seen that the British can't do math and have trouble with spelling, grammar and apostrophe use. The worst part though, is that most of them end with "at least we're doing much better than those in the United States."
It worries me how bad the U.S. is getting. I should get out more, but now I'm worried about what I'll see.
do() || do_not();
I think it's more of a matter of people being exceptionally lazy recently versus in the past than it is a matter of poor numerical comprehension. Everyone's attitude seems to be "I don't need to understand it, there's an app for that." ...then again, I'm a computer programmer who deals with charts and numbers thoroughly on an hourly basis, and I don't think I've ever had to read the "How to use this guide" section on the 40-some page bus schedule in my town to figure it out.
Sometimes I wonder if a global-scale EMP or solar flare would be the best thing to ever happen to humanity.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Millions of people struggle to understand. Whatever. We do remember that we come from a times when there was no math around at all, right? So how much time do we spend being happy abouth the fact that millions of people do understand a payslip or a train timetable? Making fuss about these millions without context shows poor skills in philosophy and can ruin lives.
Some important questions to ask around these skills and the millions are here:
How many and much total skills do people have?
Is the total going up or down?
Is the relative amount of math skills in this total going up or down?
What are the other skills that might be replacing or being replaced by math skills?
Which skills should be priorities? For which professions?
FCKGW 09F9 42
FTFY
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Correlation is not causation.
We need to be reminded of this often, because our minds work largely in a correlative mode. And so we fall back on correlative thinking easily. Only by conscious effort can we combat this kind of thinking (when it is useful to do so).
My college career was greatly aided by the fact that many of these people will play poker for money.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
When you think about the math required to understand the science behind climate change, or the time spans involved in evolution...
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I come from the UK and personally find mathematics pretty difficult. I can work through problems on paper but my mental arithmetic is atrocious. By the time I two operands and an operator in my head and have broken up the problem into a simpler problem, I have forgotten the original two numbers...
That said, mathematics should come the more you practice. I like to blame the school curriculum -- it is shit. The only reason why I am valuable is because I acquired computing skills playing on computers as a child.
I'd like to blame mathematics textbooks but I cannot. My generation and a few before me have lost the willpower and motivation to actually study and learn things properly. Our education system does not really promote mathematics that well. My school staff was rife with young twenty somethings fresh out of university with no real ability to teach...
Teaching has lost its respect and professionalism in the UK too. Add to the fact it became okay and even cool to be ignorant in modern culture.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
The one for 1.5 million dollars on my $15/hr paycheck with zero down and $200/month for 5 years until the whole balloon comes due? I knew me some numbers I coulda avoided that debacle. Who knew?
It seems there are three alternatives -- innumeracy makes peoples' lives better, worse, or doesn't affect them at all. In the 21st Century, arguments that it makes peoples' lives better, or doesn't affect them at all, would have to be pretty creative, so I think we can stipulate that it makes peoples' lives worse. We're then left to determine whether the worsening of their lives rises (falls?) to the point of ruination. To do this, one would have to take a random sample from a population of innumerates, determine the average quality of life of the sample, and perform a statistical hypothesis test, using the one-sample z-test . . . oh, wait.
Despite the possible difficulties in the semantics and understanding of what numeracy actually means, the idea that people have gaps in their understanding of basic mathematics is hardly new. It would be quite interesting to sit people down and teach them from extremely basic addition (1+1=2) and work them to what can be considered higher mathematics with something like Khan Academy it wouldn't even take that long. One could make a good dent in making this problem go away.
then something is wrong. "Maths" is so vague. Plenty of people can get by without calculus and trig, for instance. Basic math is actually useful for almost everyone (I don't know a single person that wouldn't find it useful).
It doesn't help that we still follow the classical progression for math curriculum rather than updating it to the modern world. We can't rely on college to teach necessary math skills, we have to ensure that high school graduates have the skills they need to function in society. The question that students ask when they hit geometry/trig ("when will I ever use this") is reasonable...unless you're going on to higher math, those two subjects are nearly useless. We should, instead, be teaching things like statistics in high school. I think it would even be advisable for students/parents to be given the choice between a college focused curriculum where it's assumed the student will continue his/her education and one that's focused towards preparing them to enter the workforce and manage their lives. The latter track could include courses in basic accounting and computers. It may seem to those of us that grok math easily that balancing a checkbook, keeping a budget or saving towards a goal is a simple matter of arithmetic, but to many just understanding which numbers to add and subtract is challenging.
instead of worrying about diversity, inclusion, and social justice this wouldn't be as much of a problem. In addition, if they actually taught arithmetic instead of trying to have kids reconstruct it from first principles, it might be less confusing.
I wonder if they are able to name the great LGBT scientists, or explain how evil Western Culture is today, or demonstrate how to properly apply a condom to a banana. I understand this is an article bemoaning the fate of the UK - but it is coming to the States, and we happily grease the tracks for the train.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
From the article:
For less prestigious universities, "the inclusion of mathematical requirements can reduce the number of applicants to unsustainably low levels"
The owner of the DNA Lounge in San Francisco once noted this conversation with some construction people:
Noewell: Hey, do you have a calculator?
Barry: (Hands over his Palm Pilot.)
Noewell: (Looks...) No, I need one that can do square roots.
Barry: Huh??
Noewell: You know, Pythagorean Theorem?
Barry: Uhhhhh...
Noewell: A^2 + B^2 = C^2?
(Waits...)
I'm hanging a diagonal cable, and I know the width and height and need to know how long to cut it?
Barry: So this is that actual real world use of geometry that they told us about! I didn't believe it! I never expected to see this happen!
If people were better at math, bankers would lose power.
Think about it.
Read the Bell Curve. Folks with low IQ will do badly in math and life in general. Its not that lack of math causes smoking, but more lower-g folks will smoke and be innumerate.
Not just maths, i get the feeling that sciences are loosing ground.
What are these people smoking?
One needs to be a bleeding lawyer to *know* what to calculate intp the payslip in the fist place. One needs to deduce the communal tax ( some 20% depending on the city, but its not stated anywhere on the slip!). Then there is the progressige national tax. Which I think is calculated after the communal tax. Anyone (who don't work with the tax authorities) care to tell me what the progression levels are?
And once we have done that, lets deduce the pension ensurance (which I think is comparable to the pay) and health insurance (which should not be comparable to pay).
And when this is calclulated, lets take into account the tax reductions that are taken in advance, lowering the tax rate.
Anyone who says everybody should be able to calculate their payslip is an egocentirc arrogant SHAAH.
And the other point - train time table. That is easy - and again don't require maths. The train is late. And the nice lady will announce it when it arrives. (If it arrives).
Perhaps life is more formal in the UK, where TFA originates. But here in Soviet Finland, we have this thing called "reilu meininki".
That's arithmetic not math!
That's akin to saying "That's physics not science!"
"Mathematics can, broadly speaking, be subdivided into the study of quantity, structure, space, and change (i.e. arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and analysis)."
So yes, arithmetic is math
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness.
Seems this study is biased by the life outcomes they chose to judge by. Would there still be correlation if they judged based on outcomes such as these:
number of children, number of grandchildren, length of life, average amount of stress
You just demonstrated a perfect example of the ideologically entrenched - claiming something that is obviously correct as untrue because that's what believing in a certain ideology requires.I'm sure you know how to do a Google search so I'm going to assume this was for example purposes only and you actually knew this to be the case. so well done, you should score a 5 for that apt demonstration.
Your example suggested the Laffer curve defies basic logic when it is eminently obvious to all of the bright people here at /. that the Laffer curve is a very simple concept to understand and obviously correct.
If there are no taxes (0% tax rate) then you get no tax revenue. If you increase tax rates slightly you get some tax revenue. If you continue to increase tax rates in small increments then tax revenues increase correspondingly.
Well, if tax rates are 100% then there is no disposable money left, so no economic activity and no tax revenue -- ok, this is still in the realm of the obvious. Now you reduce tax rates some amount until economic activity can resume at some level, and then you will actually have tax revenues again. Slightly decrease taxes rates more and more tax revenue.
When these two curves meet we have a peak at which tax rates are optimized for the maximum tax revenue.
I actually spent an hour on the phone with Laffer two weeks ago. The Laffer Curve is great in principle, but very difficult to apply in a practical fashion. Other than at the end-points ( 0% and 100% tax rates ) the exact curve isn't known.
It's also impossible to say where the economy of a given country or state falls on the curve, and whether raising or lowering taxes will increase or decrease revenue. The best an economist can do is compare economies with different tax rates, look at the relative strength of their economies — and try to control for the myriad variables that also affect economic output.
In effect, the Laffer Curve is a lot like "buy low, sell high." It's obvious, but it doesn't tell you whether stocks, gold, etc. are "high" or "low" at any given time.
The other day - in a discussion of quantum computing, of all things - I was downvoted into oblivion and called a "stupid fuck" twice for pointing out that a quantity that grows at a constant rate follows an exponential growth curve. Now I don't think the people behind that were necessarily innumerate, because one of them managed to misapply some first-semester calculus in his argument. What does often happen is that people who learn some math in a rote way are unable to apply it to real-world problems, or even to interpret them correctly. Taking a math course or two - unless focused on creative problem-solving - isn't necessarily going to help much.
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"Chris Humpries" should know that his name is spelled with a "K." . . . . . Fuck, I hate my girlfriend.
Not too many people use any sort of math skills after school beyond tipping and sorting change, and math itself is elective after grade 10(at least here in BC)
so I would imagine that for a lot people, they just forget it over time.
Hell, I don't even remember how to do long division.
I saw it.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Basically by the simple fact that the endpoints are at zero, and the function itself is not a zero constant function, it must have a maximum somewhere (perhaps more than one). That's calculus 101, stuff that should be taught in grade 9. Now it may be that the optimal point is very sensitive to overall economic conditions, or simply that the maximum is a broad peak, so the curve may not be very practical, but it doesn't change its basic properties. Alas, the "curve" is a completely abstract thing, it's pretty much impossible to produce the data for such a curve in reality, so it's a mental exercise only.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
2 + 2 = 10: 2x4^0 + 2x4^0 = 1x4^1 + 0x4^0
8. Ah! Ah! Ah!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Whether that curriculum is taught correctly, and whether the students absorb and retain the knowledge, is another thing. But the basics seem to be there.
It is not enough to have the basics there - you have to go beyond the basics because post-school people will forget much of the what they learnt most recently. In teaching more advanced concepts you use the basics over and over again and it gets drilled into your skull for good. The old O' levels which I took went up to basic, polynomial calculus and I do not seem to remember any complaints the people did not know primary school maths at that time. If the UK raised the academic standards of schools to what they once were the problem will go away because, when we had those standards, it did not exist.
Woman: Give me 8 QuickPick tickets ..
Cashier: That'll be $16 ....
Woman: OH! give me three more.
Cashier: That'll be $22
Woman: Hmm give me three more..
Cashier: $28
Woman: Try 3 more. Cashier: (exasperated) How much do you want to spend???
Woman: $40
Cashier: so you want 20 tickets
Woman: If I have enough money yes, give me 20..
"weak math skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness"
How about this for an example of bad math? Researchers post an article making the age-old mistake of equating correlation to causation.
Calculators should be banned from Maths classes. They are OK in subjects such as physics or design & technology, but calculators add as little value to maths classes as paint by numbers does to art. And, while the UK worries about numeracy, perhaps they could also concentrate on language. I'm appalled by the lousy grammar in England, and it amazes me how impressed British people can be by those who are fluent in another language. Mental arithmetic should be exercised at primary school level, and at secondary school pupils should be encouraged to solve problems, not compute answers.
I have four children, the oldest has her PhD, first son has a law degree, the youngest is in his third year of collage with a 3.4 GPA. My other daughter graduated manga cum laude from high school but it took two years of summer school, night classes, plus some cheating to pass the math part of the Florida FCAT. She was unable to attend collage because she said she would rather stab her eyes out than take another math class. She is graduating from cosmetology school this month. Her teacher told her that she was the best student she ever taught. She just has to be very careful with any procedure that requires fractions.
My granddad always used to say - there are 3 kinds of people; those who know number and those who don't.
....on how many fingers you have?
Ever since I graduated high school I've been advocating for schools to require a personal finance class. We have unprecedented access to tools that allow us to do most or all of our own financial planning. There's absolutely no reason for people these days to not understand how to spend, save, invest, etc. I firmly believe that the housing bubble could have been avoided if people truly knew what ARM mortgages were. But then again, Alan Greenspan was heavily promoting them too.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I always wondered if it would direct me to some secret govt. web site. Or maybe a fortune cookie factory.
I wasn't sure what the extra numbers were for. A port?
Most uneducated grownups will remain uneducated their entire lives. Either they were never given the chance to receive an education, or they didn't care. But in either case they stay that way.
Perhaps they have a sleeping genius inside. It doesn't matter. That genius will stay asleep, and so the person is, for all intents and purposes, stupid.
I think an overly complex tax system ruin even more people's life... Wasting time of even the more educated people... to read through.. er... tax/tax-return filing documentations and actually file them...
Aristotle pointed out that one's capacity for virtue is limited by one's intelligence.
To put it simply: if you truly want to do the right thing, but you are so uneducated that you can't figure out what the right thing is, you wind up not doing the right thing. The thing you actually do is one of the wrong things, and so it is probably harmful to someone.
Even if the soul of such a person is as pure as untrodden snow, the actual outcomes of their actual actions are equivalent to those of a morally inferior person.
When a person is in a position that his actions could harm others (such as, say, an airplane pilot who’s actions could crash the plane), that person is morally obligated to attain and maintain a high level of competence. However, since we all live as part of an interconnected society, we are *all* in this position. Any action we take could harm others if not thought through, so lifelong self-education is a moral imperative for all of us.
Everyone has genetic limits to intelligence, and limits on opportunities for education, which are forgivable. When you hit those limits and need to make decisions that are beyond them, the morally correct thing to do is seek guidance from someone who is more appropriately educated.
If you do neither; if you insist on remaining ignorant and on directing your life based on this ignorance, then you harm everyone around you. You are therefore guilty of negligence, and therefore you are a bad person.
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Well, if tax rates are 100% then there is no disposable money left, so no economic activity and no tax revenue
No economic activity at 100%? The citizenry may not be spending money but the government will still be doing so; if the money is not spent it will be a meaningless concept. If in this hypothetical situation the government spends the money to to cater adequately for all citizens needs (i.e. the nation becomes an utopian socialism), then there is in theory no problem. It is not necessary for the government to spend the money itself, it is perfectly possible for the government to give every citizen an allowance to spend according their wishes. Don't ask for examples; this is just a rebuttal of the quoted statement, which is not 'obviously correct'. I appreciate it might make more sense in the context of monetarist economics. But that comes with a whole load of preconceptions, which you have taken for granted.
You must be confused about what "education" is realy for. Think cog or high yeald farm animal.
For the U.S. at least, http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf places the blame with the education authorities themselves.
Why do some believe that everybody should be able to do math?
There were always plenty of people bad at math. 100 years ago, everybody at the university was good at math - because they had struggled a lot to get there. Most didn't get the change. Today, it seems much worse, but only because nearly everybody get the chance to try higher education. The only thing that can stop them, is when they fail a course. When everybody gets to try, you get all the bozos too. Before, they never try, because schooling was expensive and they knew it wouln't work out for them. Today they try, and therefore it seems like we're worse off than before. A higher percentage fails at every level, but only because so many more try.
and the GP(?) might find, if you put the effort in, that the girls are ahead of their peers. My son was 'diagnosed' with all sorts but basically his language skills and a few other things were behind the 'norm', so my partner and I put the effort in with some timely and helpful advice from some very good professionals and we find that now, he is ahead.
Take the time to teach kids the basics, its not *that* hard and once they get it, you'll be crying with joy more than out of sorrow.
Watching intellectual development take place is a truly beautiful thing.
rote memorization for the basic times tables is reinforced with the the ability to use a slipstick.
confidence in the magnitude of your answers translates to confidence in your daily transactions.
I spend $5 for a pack of gum and get 39 cents back when I should have gotten $3.90 Having the sense of numbers helps dispell the fear of math.
Yes, saying "I can't do maths," is inexcusable. They should be saying, "I can't do math." Knuckleheads.
Michigan has no caps on injuries. Everything here is no fault insurance with very high premiums. There have been some ballot proposals to remove the no fault, or to change the no cap injury, but they've failed.
This. Basic statistics education for the win.
There used to be a thing in classical education called the "trivium". It's the origin of our modern English word "trivial", and the latter got its meaning because the trivium was considered the basic groundwork that every educated adult was expected to know already. It consisted of three subjects: grammar, (propositional) logic, and rhetoric. We only bother trying to teach the first of these to people today, and generally let them reach adulthood without having really mastered even it.
I think that these three "trivial" subjects should not only be reinstated, but they should be paired with comparable mathematical subjects which should be considered equally trivial requirements for any adult: arithmetic, (elementary) algebra, and statistics.
In primary school, kids should learn their grammar and arithmetic, and be capable of accomplishing basic tasks with words and numbers, writing and understanding qualitative and quantitative statements.
In middle school, kids should learn their elementary algebra and propositional logic, and be capable of meaningfully converting qualitative and quantitative statements between each other, seeing how words and numbers relate to each other in a more abstract way.
In high school, kids should learn statistics and rhetoric, to be able to persuade people with both words and numbers and, even more importantly, to avoid being mislead by others attempting to do the same.
Trigonometry, calculus, and all the more advanced mathematics are awesome and may be necessary depending on what you want to do, but are not necessary just to function in the world. Likewise predicate and modal logics and all the more complex variations on those; anyone who argues for a living (i.e. most politicians, lawyers, etc) should be required to understand them as much as a physicist needs to know calculus, but normal people can get by well enough without them.
But grammar, arithmetic, elementary algebra, propositional logic, rhetoric, and statistics... those are just... trivial.
Or, I guess, "sexial". Which might help sell it? Support sexium education today! It's the other "sex ed"!
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
No economic activity at 100%? The citizenry may not be spending money but the government will still be doing so;
Um, I don’t think you quite understand. If the income tax rate is 100%, then there is no point in a person working, because working results in a net income of zero. Working results in the person receiving $0; not working results in $0: may as well not work. If no one works, then the government receives no tax revenue: 100% of nothing is nothing.
100... okay, 150 years ago, it was perfectly standard educational doctrine to say some people just couldn't ever learn to read. The economy had to have a place for these people to work. Now, around the world, 99.9% adult literacy is either a reality or within reach, the ability to do statistics and mathematical reasoning is rapidly becoming a requirement for work in the 21st century skill set. The highest-paid bachelor's are all engineering or math-heavy fields like accounting, finance, and computer science. People who don't learn math very well are going to be left behind very quickly, if they haven't already.
They do? How do they fault? Does a breaker trip? Does an exception handler kick in?
You go on about their math skills while your writing skills are just as bad. Just something to think about.
Kill the stupids.
I am a math tutor, paid a tidy sum to correct the errors that most teachers make. Test yourself: start counting to 20. Now do it backwards. What number did you start with? Odds are that you started and ended with 1. This is the first mistake, that nearly every teacher makes all the way back in preschool and primary. You always start with 0. Zero means origin. Consider a full number line (1-dimensional) or 4-quadrant graph (2-dimensional). The center of the line or graph is marked zero (or 0,0 in a graph). Starting with 1 is fine as long as all you're doing is basic arithmetic. As soon as you get to fractions, everything falls apart. Consider, we think of 2+3=5; but really what we're doing is 0 +2 +3 = 5. Notice that the sign is attached to the number as opposed to being exclusively an operator. Having the correct starting place is critical to proper numeracy. The second error is even more fundamental. Most inability to perform arithmetic is psychological. If people learned a mantra, such as "If you can count, you can do math(s). Everything else is a shortcut," it would reinforce the notion that math is nothing more than a language to describe relationships. And all the other operations can be reduced to repeated counting. Once the basics are covered, the rest can fall into place much more easily.
If the tax rate is 100%, then everyone works for the government for free, and the government pays for everyone.
Poor education ruining lives
While the endpoints are well understood, what it looks like between them is not well understood. Or in other words you may not have a nice curve with a nice well-defined peak.
The most shocking statistic in that report has nothing to do with math. 20% of Britons are not even embarrased by their illiteracy. I wonder what that statistic is like in the US.
Despite their difficulties, they probably don't yet realise how lucky they already got (to have a Slashdotter as a Dad :)).
My mother did foster-care (in Australia) for many years. If you want to see a nanny state, examine the treatment of sisters in the care of the state. (The same coddling isn't extended to boys in care.) An adult male ruling the lives of someone else's teen-aged daughters is a precarious situation, so it's the dad who needs luck. Tweenie-aged girls realise very quickly how to game the system.
And foster care doesn't mean the children are orphans. It usually means the true parent(s) are unwilling to provide full-time care, with possible or actual sexual-abuse being the most common reason for foster-care. The cry 'think of the children' is mostly practiced as 'save the helpless girls', hence its neglect of helpless boys.
While its a no brainer that everyone should have the math skills to work out change or calculate a percentage, the idea that 'everyone can do maths' denys the link between genetics and intellect. Some people really are stupid, and its not because theyre poor, or becuase they are antisocial, quite the opposite, theyre poor and anti-social because theyre stupid! Its not their fault, and we really need to admit that some people are just inherently smarter/stupider than others to develop realistic public policy and expectations.
I work with a wide variety of international university students at the moment. This past semester we gave math tests to all incoming students for our program (which provides English bridging support and instruction for international students. The results were shocking to me, but to the "old hands" (they have been here for 2-3 years) not a surprise.
1) students from Asia, especially East Asia, ace the tests. Even ones who say that their math is "crap" easily pass the entry tests for the math level for incoming American students.
2) students from South America also generally do very well, but those with self-described "math problems" don't do as well. Still they test into level appropriate classes.
3) students from Africa and the middle east are almost all required to take remedial (high school intermediate algebra) math before they can take level appropriatte math. The worst is that they often come with the intention of majoring in Engineering, and they can't do algebra.
The students in remedial maths almost all come from a school system based entirely on British standards. Most of them have not taken a math class in 2 or 3 years, and still they are applying to be engineering students.
Paul Bowles said once that for the Arab Berbers the sun comes up because Allah wills it to come up. If Allah did not wish it to be so, it would be dark. If, one morning, the sun fails to rise, it is not a problem with the sun, it is just that Allah decided to let it take a rest. I thiink many of my middle-eastern students would agree.