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Reddit mentions of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

Sentiment score: 13
Reddit mentions: 42

We found 42 Reddit mentions of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. Here are the top ones.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
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Release dateAugust 2001
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Found 42 comments on Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences:

u/ViciousCycle · 70 pointsr/worldnews

I blame the average Joe's inability to do some simple math when considering the world he lives in. If you're not getting regular raises, you're effectively getting regular pay cuts because of inflation. If the general public wasn't so innumerate we'd have riots.

u/Zulban · 23 pointsr/hypotheticalsituation

Excellent hypothetical! I'm going to go with statistics. How this would change the world is best explained in the book Innumeracy which I highly recommend. But in bullet points:

  • It would hugely impact people's ability to think critically. Tons of cognitive biases are kept at bay with an understanding of statistics.
  • Poor people are the biggest gamblers. It is a tax on the poor. I think this would put a stop to that.
  • You could no longer easily trick people with catchy headlines in the news. People would get upset and demand better evidence. It would totally transform the news.
  • Stupid and populist legislation like banning pit bulls wouldn't get to happen, because they wouldn't be populist. People would understand that pit bull owners are more likely to be abusive - that's why pit bulls are more violent. Banning them just makes the owners abuse some other animal. So says director of SPCA.
  • Stupid biased polls would die. Bad research designs would die. People would no longer give any respect to those education studies made up of just 43 students.
  • I think it would secure the world economy against future crashes.
  • A mere universal understanding of correlation != causation would totally change the future of politics, policy, superstition, religions, education, and science. A degree in statistics goes much beyond that.
  • People would demand open data from their governments. People are interested in what they have experiences with, so exploring open data would be fun to a lot more people.
  • A huge hurdle to obtaining technology and programming skills is math. Without that hurdle I think tons of people would self educate to become decent programmers. We'd see a worldwide revolution in automation and open data.

    Same answer for doctorate, I think. I guess I'd go with machine learning or data science on the focus to amplify the automation, machine learning, and open data movements.
u/luisfmh · 12 pointsr/math

I personally feel the reason is that so many elementary school teacher's have a hard time understanding math, or aren't really math oriented, that they teach it without showing off the "beauty" of it. They teach it as a process or a set of rules or a bunch of steps. Also kids are REALLY perceptive, so if a teacher struggles with answering some curious kid's question, the kid will think "damn if this ADULT can't understand it, how am I ever going to understand it". So from there on out, kids just assume math is some hard esoteric memorization discipline, and by the time they get to high school, that's kind of stuck unless a parent, or other adult showed them what math is actually like.

this is a very good book about the subject. My biggest pet peeve is when people are sort of "proud" to be bad at math. You never see anyone going around proclaiming "damn I can't read"

u/craigiest · 11 pointsr/askscience

The book Innumeracy answers a very similar question about air. The conclusion Paolos comes to is that there's a 90% chance that the breath you just took contains an atom from Julius Caesar's dying utterance of "et tu Brute." Or any other breath by any other person more than a couple hundred years ago--conservative estimate of time needed for complete missing of the atmosphere.

u/cant_always_be_right · 7 pointsr/preppers

Here's a tool to help with checking your reality :)

Innumeracy

u/DuckSosu · 7 pointsr/Drama

Honestly, mathematical illiteracy is prevalent within the general public and I'd argue it's a fairly harmful problem that no one talks about or is even aware of. There's a really good short book about it called Innumeracy.

As far as this sub is concerned though I particularly find certain people's very angry reactions to polling and Nate Silver to be hilarious.

u/RShnike · 6 pointsr/math

Paulos is pretty good. He has some other good books too.

I've read and can recommend Innumeracy and AMPtSM as quick bedtime reading or to mathematical laymen.

u/zxcdw · 4 pointsr/UkrainianConflict

There's a whole book written about the subject, Innumeracy. Lots and lots of people don't understand numbers and how to interpret them, leading to all sorts of weird things.

A good read, from cover to cover.

u/piranhamoose25 · 4 pointsr/skeptic

> Mathematical literacy is more important than the typical person things.

The way you phrased that reminded me of Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos, which is a great book on these types of things.

u/Galphanore · 3 pointsr/facepalm

I feel like people like "Hotdog" in OP's screenshot should really ready Innumeracy. Hell, everyone should but people like "Hotdog" need to read it to not sound retarded.

u/hencethus · 2 pointsr/books

I really liked Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos.

u/Slacker5001 · 2 pointsr/learnmath

I know you said your not a fan of "puzzles" but in particular there is a very interesting one I liked as an math undergraduate that I think is very accessible understanding wise to non-stem majors and gives a hint about what the field of topology looks like. We has a sub in one of my math classes cover this once when he didn't properly get the material he was suppose to teach sent to him.

The Bridges of Königsberg it's puzzling at first but with the right guidance, I feel that even someone who has no background in math can grasp the answer and understand how it works as well as how it's solution is found.

Touching on some math history is also a possibility. The history of how numbers developed can be interesting and applies to everyone since everyone learns about and uses numbers in their life. Seeing the natural progression from natural numbers to integers to rationals and finally to reals throughout history is really cool if you ask me. And learning about some of the "crazy smart" math people in history can really make math feel every so slightly more relevant and relatable because you realize that it was real people who invented this abstract "math stuff" in a sense.

There is also the applications of number theory and modulo arithmetic stuff to encryption. At first doesn't seem super relatable to non-stem people but I've run across two more relatable problems in my classes. The first was the Luhn algorithm which can be used to check if certain identifying numbers like credit cards or social security numbers are indeed actual credit card or social security numbers.

The second (which I don't know if it is actually how it works in real life) is the idea of using modular arithmetic to preserve CD/DVD information despite scratches. If your CD for example has the numbers 101 and you get a scratch through the "" part of the cd, how does the cd player know what was there? Well you can add up those three digits and take them mod 2 and add the answer to the end of your string as a 4th digit. So 101 becomes 1010 because 1+1=2=0 mod 2. Now if the cd is scratched the cd player can check the 4th number and go "Oh ok, all three numbers have to add to 0, so my lost digit must be 0!" and your cd still works!

Those are a couple of random interesting problems/topics I've run into in my higher level math courses that I think are accessible for non-math majors and interesting.

EDIT - I also just remembered that I've been reading a lot of books about the importance of understanding math and statistics lately (Proofiness and Innumeracy if your interested) and I think it's a very important skill for anyone who is not so inclined towards math. Being able to understand numbers in a real world sense and be skeptical about data we see in the real world, is a powerful skill for building knowledge and avoiding biased information.

u/I_am_usually_a_dick · 2 pointsr/Showerthoughts

it has been done.

the most interesting was a test for a disease that has a 98% accuracy rate for a disease that only 1 out of 200 have and if you test positive you have only a 20% chance of having the disease. google Bayes Therom.
if you like math read it.

u/MonkeyPanls · 2 pointsr/math

Check out Prof John Allen Paulos' work. 'Innumeracy' comes to mind. I'm on mobile, so I won't try to link.

EDIT: Found a Real Computer, here's a link

Here's his website.

Disclaimer: I had Prof Paulos for a class before I dropped out of Uni. :)

u/r_a_g_s · 2 pointsr/math

There is some statistics in K-12 math in North America, but it's pretty rudimentary and basic (i.e. it's mostly simple probability, and doesn't get into samples vs. populations and so on). Things like "If a bag has 1 red marble, 2 blue marbles, 3 green marble, and 4 yellow marbles, and you reach in and pick a marble at random, what is the probability you'll get a green marble?"

I picked up a little book a long time ago called Innumeracy - Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos, a math professor at Temple University. In that book (updated in 2001), he talks about the problems people have when they aren't very "numerate", and most of the topics he covers have to do with statistics.

Actually, in his preface to the updated 2001 edition (use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature), Paulos also talks about mathematical pedagogy. He discusses: 5 key misconceptions:

  1. "Mathematics is nothing more than computation" - False - "our mathematical problems result more from insufficient exposure to mathematics as a way of thinking ... than from an inability to compute."
  2. "Math is a completely hierarchical subject" - False - "There is a cumulative aspect to certain parts of mathematics, to be sure, but it is frequently less important than many realize...."
  3. "Storytelling is as effective an educational tool in mathematics as it is in other domains, and belief to the contrary is the third misconception. ... I've always been very sensitive to the way stories, parables, vignettes, and sometimes even jokes help put formal mathematics into context, illustrate its limitations, and emphasize what should be a truism: that numbers and statistics always require interpretation."
  4. "Math is only for the few" - False - "Almost everybody can devevlop a workable understanding of numbers and probabilities, of relationships and arguments, of graphs and rates of change and of the ubiquitous role these notions play in everyday life."
  5. "Math numbs us or limits our freedom in some way" - False - "Too many people cling to the usually unarticulated belief that one must choose between life and love on the one hand and numbers and details on the other. ... Balderdash."

    Anyhow. Sorry for the long post, but I think it's worthwhile. Read Paulos' preface in its entirety.
u/SchrodingerDevil · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Technically I don't think it's an "official" word. I got it from this guy.

u/sharer_too · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

[This] (http://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405) is a great book - and actually a lot more fun than it sounds at first -

John Allen Paulos - Innumeracy

|Why do even well-educated people understand so little about mathematics? And what are the costs of our innumeracy? John Allen Paulos, in his celebrated bestseller first published in 1988, argues that our inability to deal rationally with very large numbers and the probabilities associated with them results in misinformed governmental policies, confused personal decisions, and an increased susceptibility to pseudoscience of all kinds. Innumeracy lets us know what we're missing, and how we can do something about it|


u/MikeTheInfidel · 1 pointr/skeptic

I've heard great things about John Allen Paulos' Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences but haven't read it myself yet so I don't know how much it covers about probability.

u/arvi1000 · 1 pointr/statistics

A good book about how people are generally bad with quantitative intuition is Innumeracy, by John Paulos http://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405

u/ieattime20 · 1 pointr/politics

Key word is thorough. Prob and stat is actually very intuitive, the issue is that that intuition must be built from the ground up. Most university courses fail in this respect.

Let me recommend some good, useful, and fun to read books for you: Innumeracy, Beyond Numeracy, and probably most importantly A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper all by John Allen Paulos. He's sort of a pop-math author I would consider analogous to Carl Sagan for numbers.

u/Bogatyr1 · 1 pointr/JustTzimisceThings

The Tzimisce Teacher:

​

Carl Sagan warned of a world of scientific ignorance where illogical superstitions like the anti-vaccine movement and religious tribalism increasingly took hold.

​

John Allen Paulos warned of a world of mathematical illiteracy where pyramid schemes and predatory lotteries increasingly took hold, reflected perhaps even in the popularity of the non-mathematical D&D5e and v5 VTM tabletop games.

​

In an increasingly hostile environment for the Kindred, where through the ages, not only a secretive cabal of academic vampire mages attack the clan, but a zealot-led Second Inquisition and a beckoning spell to remove former leaders, the Tzimisce have to be more intelligent and clever than the huge population of psychotic, self-serving, technologically-adjacent humans to preserve the clan's secret affairs, and excel mentally beyond the ranks of the enemy clans and factions in order to ensure survival.

​

In countries across the world, the populace are encouraged through effective emotional manipulation to become mindless, passive consumers, docile, disposable workers, and uninformed citizens, an inclination infecting even the most vaunted of intelligentsia, so while a prospective candidate member for the clan (even among the revenant families) may be admired for certain strengths of personality and courage or a unique perspective or fetishistic abberance, such individuals still remain the product of successive centuries of refulgent anti-intellectualism, and as such, must be taught or destroyed if not able to meet the challenges of membership.

​

To this end, The Tzimisce teacher dedicates their unlife to a calling of judgement. The teacher pays visits to members of the clan one can find with auspex through the world (a personal specialty from the teacher's experience), and tests them and corrects holes in their understanding of the kindred or the world or political ensnarement. If the Kindred is receptive and willing to improve and shows reasonable progress they are allowed to live, and if they are intellectually stagnant, recalcitrant, or umasterful to a degree beyond redemption, then they are executed, along with any sires or packmates or regional Sabbat leaders that attempt to stop this from happening.

​

There are some Tzimisce that completely remove themselves from the reach of other clans through adapting their bodies to hostile environments far beneath the Earth, within the oceans, or even outer space (to still contend with other supernatural creatures), but for those that remain at risk among the humans, The Teacher has culled a huge number (perhaps thousands or tens of thousands) of unacceptable clan-mates. The Teacher has not been previously spoken of much through clan histories because many fail to live to tell of meeting The Teacher.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/reddit.com

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

"The difference between our pretensions and reality is absurd and humorous, and the numerate can see this better than those who don't speak math."

u/atomic_m · 1 pointr/engineering

Suggestion: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

Not directly related to engineering, but still very good.

I also like books about design, especially opinionated design (I think design and engineering go hand in hand). One good one I've read lately is The Compact Culture.

u/jaroto · 1 pointr/PoliticalDiscussion

I didn't even realize that was a perception. I guess people in this sub may find this book illuminating.

u/TooMuchPants · 1 pointr/AskReddit

innumeracy I know you didn't mention math, but this book completely changed the way I think about the subject.

u/battletoadz4ever · 1 pointr/NoStupidQuestions

Hi, I have spent the past few years of my life advocating for critical thinking, and giving training on the topic. Many people have talked about listening to and reading both sides on any topic which is an important point - I like to say that critical thinking is a team sport. I also recommend that your first step should always be to read the Wikipedia article on any new topic that you encounter. You should not trust information on Wikipedia 100%, but this step will help you to get an overall understanding of the topic and a sense of how experts think on it.

I also recommend the following books, and I have put them in order from shortest/easiest to longest/hardest so I recommend reading them in this order:

An Illustrated Book of Bad Argumentshttps://bookofbadarguments.com/

Innumeracyhttps://www.amazon.ca/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405

Critical Thinkinghttps://www.criticalthinking.org/store/products/critical-thinking-tools-for-taking-charge-of-your-learning-amp-your-life-3rd-edition/143

Some free resources:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

And I am currently working on a free multiplayer game where you learn the logical fallacies by trying to fool your friends with deceptive famous quotes. It should be ready in a few months so I will take note of your username and DM you the link when it is ready.

u/Stuckinaloop · 1 pointr/news

I can also cherry-pick statistics to make them fit my paradigm.

Where do you think the saying...

"Lies, Lies, and Damn Statistics" comes from.

That is the problem with statistics, and why scientists sometimes arrive at bad conclusions.

It is very hard to be completely objective when trying to evaluate social phenomenon clear of preconceived notions.

I recommend this book, Innumerancy.

Even though we disagree, it is a good read.

u/dogdiarrhea · 1 pointr/math

I've always been good at math, logical and analytical thinking. I think it's partially doing my homework, extra math stuff my grandparents did with me (including contests and stuff like that), as well as hobbies that require such thinking being encouraged (card games, chess, dominoes, board games, etc.).

All I do is look at numbers and see numbers as well. Finding patterns in numbers, or systems, or whatever isn't something that comes natural to most people, even those who are competent at math. Being able to come up with predictions, patterns, and models is among the most difficult tasks we have, which is why we have professional scientists rather than a growing body of knowledge entirely done by hobbyists and amateurs. The point being that training your mind to do these tasks isn't some terrible character flaw you have, in fact most people who try struggle with it.

The Khan academy is a commonly suggested, and excellent, resource for most basic math topics. What I think you're asking for, specifically, is applying math and analytical thinking to day-to-day scenarios in order to make sense of the world around you. That skill actually has a name: "numeracy", the name given by some mathematicians as they believe it is as fundamental a skill as literacy. I do think that it's a crucial skill, but don't get discouraged by the comparison at something as "basic" as literacy. For one because there is an overwhelming amount of people who are not numerically literate, and also literacy itself is not trivial, while we learn the basics of reading at a very young age typically there is a more advanced comprehension requirement and we are not considered "literate" until about the 10th or 11th grade (and a standardized test usually determines this).

I can't think of any activities to build numeracy skills, but to get started John Paulos' Innumeracy is a good resource. It shows common pitfalls, why they are wrong, reasons as to why they occur, and the correct way to think about the suggested problems. If you feel confident after reading it a good way to practice the skill is to find news articles, and see if any of the numbers are misleading.

Critical thinking courses (typically listed as a philosophy course, I believe?) are also a great way to improve logical and analytical reasoning. This is the rather pricy textbooks I used, I linked to the Canadian site because Amazon Canada lists the complete table of contents, so you can search around for other books that cover the topics, if you wish. You could also find courses online, for example khan academy (to be honest, I don't like the topics as presented because it spends a lot of time on fallacies, but doesn't even cover inductive reasoning), or on Coursera.

u/wh0ligan · 0 pointsr/Buffalo

I taking a wild guess that you have read this book Innumeracy

Even if you haven't it is a very interesting read.

u/phattie83 · -1 pointsr/news

>98.44%/99.9%

That should be 98.44-99.9%

>being european.

Actually, it's "something other than NA"...

>So yeah, between naught and fuckall percent native American

Again, I'm going to need a numerical value for "fuckall".. Because "naught" means zero, so I'd have to assume fuckall means "more than zero"...

Innumeracy can be overcome with the proper desire and effort. This might be a good place to start...

u/Firesinis · -3 pointsr/AskReddit

Dawkins is a great author and thinker, and he would benefit a lot from taking a look at this.

u/MasterFubar · -6 pointsr/news

> I own 1000 acres of farmland that I use to grow corn.

So you cannot use rain water to grow that corn? You are forced to cover those acres in plastic, so the rainwater flows downhill, instead of watering your corn?

If you use a 1000 acres of land to grow corn, you are using all the water that rains on that field, then why cannot you store any of that water?

> Every time it rains, I divert the stream into my water tower because I am allowed to collect rain water.

Does your water tower grow bigger and bigger every time it rains?

You see, if you have a planted field in your farm you ARE using rainwater, much much more rainwater than you could ever collect.

Imagine one inch of rain falling on one acre of land. That's 25,000 gallons of water. Over one acre. It's a big amount of water, but only 0.1% of the total that fell on those 1000 acres of farmland. So, if your farmer owns 1000 acres of land and builds a one-acre rainwater collector, he's storing 0.1% of the rainwater that falls on his property. Do you call that being greedy?

If the farmer has a thousand acres of land, he gets 25 million gallons of water for every inch it rains on his property. There's no way he could ever store any significant part of all that water.

The sad reality is that most people cannot do the simplest math. And, unfortunately, those people are allowed to vote. This is what makes people vote for law like those restricting the collection of rain water. They only see the COMMERCIAL and GREEDY catchwords there, without ever stopping to do some simple math and think, does this make any sense?