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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. "
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.
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.
uneducated != stupid
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.
Innumeracy is what keeps the mythology of supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve alive.
Yeah but usually ineducable == stupid.
Don't be a pedant. Arithmetic is a branch of mathematics. Therefore, the statement "I can't do maths" is akin to stating, "I can't read" when you don't know the letters of the alphabet.
That distinction doesn't exist in the broader use of the English language, and it doesn't freaking matter. It was clear to everyone what was meant.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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.
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.
Waste of mod points, but: that is completely proper British English, you insensitive clod. This is an article written in the UK.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
"...'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".
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
uneducated != stupid
Agreed.
I would go further and say neither being uneducated or stupid makes you a bad person. It may make your life more difficult than it needs to be, but it doesn't drop you a rung on the moral ladder.
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
No, and while the GP was a troll, there is a point to be made here –the problem in the UK is that people don't want to be educated in maths. There's a large segment of society that thinks that it's good to be numerically illiterate. They wear "I don't know maths" as if it's a badge of honour. That is stupid.
Here in America we have it easy - we only have to learn one math, not an entire "programme" featuring an assortment of "maths".
FTFY
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Or indeducable == ideologically entrenched. A portion of the populace which is not to be neglected.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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,
Unfortunately, while we used to have separate exams for arithmetic and mathematics, the powers that be decided that the best way to narrow the gap between low achieving inner city schools and high-achieving middle class schools was to merge the many different exams into single subjects; arithmetic and mathematics became general mathematics; physics, chemistry, biology and APH became general science.
Back 30 years, there used to be adverts on TV at every lunch-time to help people with literacy and numeracy skills, titled "On the move". They just mentioned a hotline anyone could call to arrange an appointment with an adviser (information pack or application forms wouldn't be much use). These days, it's cheaper for employers to employ East Europeans with English as a second language.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
dont worry about those pesky details. Statistics show that most people move every 3 to 4 years, so you just sell the house before the balloon is due. The way that real estate always appreciates, you should be able to cover your next down payment with the profits from selling this one.
You got that right. I studied mathematics, have a master's degree in statistics, work as a statistical programmer; but I can not do arithmetic. I can write GEE code in my sleep, but I can't balance my checkbook.
Having another kid ISN'T bad for them financially. The welfare state is there to make sure of that.
Schooling and education were once considered important because they provided a way out of poverty. Now the government provides. Why bother with pointless chores like learning arithmetic?
This.
Perhaps being bad at "maths" is nothing but a symptom of exactly the same problem that's causing them to be bad at life. Wonder if the cause could be laziness?
Probably not; some of the hardest working people I know have abysmal math skills.
I would keep that theory to myself when around factory workers, farmers, and pretty much anyone else who does a fair amount of physical labor (but very little math) for a living.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Damn fog-breathers, acting like they invented the English language or something...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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
These people aren't uneducated. They went to school. They received an education. If after years of schooling you still can't divide 114 by 6 given a pad and pencil and a couple minutes of quiet time, you don't get to claim "But I'm just uneducated!". You're stupid, either willfully or otherwise.
Really, you should be able to do the above in your head in seconds, but out of necessity we're setting the bar pretty much on the ground.
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.
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.
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.
"Ideologically entrenched" is just a kind of stupid. I fight that all the time at work, often in myself.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The wings of the balloon structure had ellipsoid partitions wrapped in plastic. Not only did I need to make these partitions, I also needed to wrap them with a plastic sheet of appropriate dimension. It turns out that the perimeter of ellipses doesn't have an exact formula, but does have adequate approximations. That allowed us to make useful mass calculations on the design (mass here being a critical parameter of balloon systems which determines not only how much the balloon can lift, but even whether it can fly at all) without having to build and weigh the structure.
sciences are loosing ground.
Naw, that's just geology.
I suggest you have never met a mathematician - it is a sure identifying characteristic that they can't do arithmetic.
Just like Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, and Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal, it is also the case that Real Mathematicians Can't Do Arithmetic.
A Real Mathematician knows about the number zero, and several different versions of the "number" infinity, and can probably cope with the number one on a good day, but any other numbers are arithmetic, not maths, and far too applied to be worthy of their attention.
I have a maths degree, but completely screwed up some basic arithmetic recently. Arithmetic is, as you said, a branch of mathematics, but it not the sum total (pun intended) or even a necessary part. Rather than equating it with not knowing the letters of the alphabet, I'd liken it to being unable to spell:
Good spelling, while useful in every day life isn't nearly as important as being able to write well and understand complex texts; a computer can help you with spelling. Similarly in maths, good arithmetic can be useful in life in speeding things up a bit, but with calculators on every phone and computer it isn't crucial. Whereas the important bits of maths (analytical thinking, the rigours of proof, reasoning, deduction etc.) are much harder to get a computer to help with, and are much harder to spot in oneself if not present.
It doesn't really matter if people can't remember how to do long division or multiplication by hand; what matters is that they find out/work out how to do so when needed. Given that, the OP's point does have some validity, and is not merely pedantic. That said, the title mentions "numeracy", not mathematics.
Of course, the real problem seems to be not that people cannot do maths (which, anecdotally, ime, they usually can when given encouragement and a few pointers), but that they're being taught to answer maths test questions, rather than understand the principles behind the problems; as such, it's easy to forget the specific methods, and hard to work them out later when needed. Sadly this seems to be a problem across much of the UK education system.
At the college physics class (two-semester course of physics for Electrical Engineers), we were told to keep our calculators in out pockets and do the math in our heads. This being a course for engineers, we were given a 20% error margin. Since I had been doing this in high school anyway, I found myself being able to guesstimate ("mental quarter-precision FPU") the results with precision somewhere around 1%. It takes some practice, but it works. I guess it's the result of me having been an occasional slide rule/log tables user in high school (geeky, I know) - you learn to quicky interpolate between known values of functions with a surprising precision.
BTW, there is no such thing as "lousy grammar", only careless writing. Grammar is what linguists come up with when they study the language that people actually speak, not the other way around.
Ezekiel 23:20
I don't know why this got modded down because it is dead on. My brother has a Master's in mathematics, and teaches math for a living. (I think he's covering Statistics this year). It drives him crazy to hear someone give him a bunch of number to add in his head thinking that he must be able to do that if he's good at math. Sort of like how us software engineers like to hear questions about doing something in the Microsoft Office tool du jour since we know about "that computer stuff".
Math is proofs. And sometimes it has little to nothing to do with numbers.
Happy people make bad consumers.
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.
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.
And the LORD spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
1...2...5! (three sir!)
THREE!!!
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
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."
That's why I took computer science. We only need to count to 1...
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