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Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

By: John Allen Paulos
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking
ISBN: 0670830089
ISBN-13: 9780670830084
Released: 09 Nov 1989
RRP: £12.95
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Great read - By: PhilosopherKing, 18 Nov 2008
To my mind a well educated person ought to know some basic mathematics & science as well as history & literature.

As an engineering graduate & a trained accountant, I am often shocked when talking to otherwise intelligent people who can't do basic arithmetic.

An excellent book by a very knowledgeable author. I have read four of this gentleman's books & they are alll very interesting.
Concise Examination Of Public Numeracy. - By: Ross, 16 Mar 2007
Sadly this book will probably not be read by the people who would gain the most out of it, those who are terrified of numbers. Innumeracy is the one state of ignorance which is seen as sociallly acceptable. Paulos presents a strong case that mass innemeracy is a severe problem in modern society (he mostly refers to his own country, the USA, but the case is just as true in the UK) & the effects are alll too real.

Basic misunderstandings of probability for example seriously impacts the ability of people to make rational life choices, Paulos uses the example of people who are too afraid to fly because they fear terrorism when the dangers are absolutely minescule in comparison to the danger of choking to death. The susceptiblity of the innumerate to psuedoscience is another Paulos bugbear.

The only downside to the book is that I can't honestly claim that it got me thinking about the subject for more than five minutes after I finished it.
An Imaginative Look at the World of Numeracy! - By: Donald Mitchell, 25 Jun 2004
To me, the most intriguing aspect of this book was Professor Paulos's ability to take simple math concepts that I learned way back when . . . & to show how they could enrich & expand my appreciation of the world around me. It was like Alice going through the looking glass in the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. There's a lot there that I never imagined. For example, the way disease rates are often described is for those who have survived to 85 years old. If you are younger, your current probability of incidence will be much lower (possibly more than 90 percent lower). Also, you can use the way you design your questions & sample to help eliminate bias. You can also find great humor in the errors of authority figures who misquote probabilities & risks. Plus, you can answer questions that I would never have thought of (such as the likelihood of breathing in an atom that Caesar did).
If you are feeling cowed about your math ability, take heart! Most of the concepts here you can handle. For example, can you multiply two numbers together? You can answer "yes" to my question if you can do so with a calculator. If so, you can appreciate almost alll of the examples in the book.

Professor Paulos has a mind that works differently & more inquisitively from mine, but I enjoyed learning how his thoughts. He thinks about topics like how long it would take dump trucks to excavate Mount Fuji, how many times a deck of cards need to be shuffled to become random, & what the Earned Run Average is for a pitcher who lasts one-third inning & gives up 5 runs. I realized that if I thought about more things like this, I would develop new perspectives on the world.

He makes a helpful attempt to create solutions so that more people can appreciate the world in a quantitative sense. What do we lose if we don't? Well, those who don't learn a little math will end up in careers that pay a lot less. Social resources will be misapplied to problems that are less serious (obscure diseases & terrorism get a lot more attention to reducing accidental deaths among young people, which is a greater danger). We will make bad resource decisions in our own lives.

I also appreciated how few people can use mathematics in creative ways to solve problems. I suspect from this experience that there's a higher level of mathematical thinking that Professor Paulos did not explain in his book that we would alll benefit from learning. Where do we start? I can hardly wait to learn!

An Imaginative Look at the World of Numeracy! - By: Donald Mitchell, 13 Jun 2004
To me, the most intriguing aspect of this book was Professor Paulos's ability to take simple math concepts that I learned way back when . . . & to show how they could enrich & expand my appreciation of the world around me now. It was like Alice going through the looking glass in the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. There's a lot there that I never imagined. For example, the way disease rates are often described is for those who have survived to 85 years old. If you are younger, your current probability of incidence will be much lower (possibly more than 90 percent lower). Also, you can use the way you design your questions & sample to help eliminate bias (such as by asking about the results of a coin flip & dangerous sexual behavior in the same population). You can also find great humor in the errors of authority figures who misquote probabilities & risks. Plus, you can answer questions that I would never have thought of (such as the likelihood of breathing in an atom that Caesar did).

If you are feeling cowed about your math ability, take heart! Most of the concepts here you can handle. For example, can you multiply two numbers together? You can answer "yes" to my question if you can do so with a calculator. If so, you can appreciate almost alll of the examples in the book.

Professor Paulos has a mind that works differently & more inquisitively from mine, but I enjoyed learning how his thoughts. He thinks about topics like how long it would take dump trucks to excavate Mount Fuji, how many times a deck of cards need to be shuffled to become random, & what the Earned Run Average is for a pitcher who lasts one-third inning & gives up 5 runs. I realized that if I thought about more things like this, I would develop new perspectives on the world.

He makes a helpful attempt to create solutions so that more people can appreciate the world in a quantitative sense. These include using exponents to indicate the size of numbers (such as the Richter Scale does for earthquake strength), refocusing secondary math education to practical applications rather than teaching calculus earlier & earlier, having talented mathematicians teach younger people, & disciplining those who communicate in public to check the mathematical accuracy of what they say.

What do we lose if we don't? Well, those who don't learn a little math will end up in careers that pay a lot less. Social resources will be misapplied to problems that are less serious (obscure diseases & terrorism get a lot more attention to reducing accidental deaths among young people, which is a greater danger). We will make bad resource decisions in our own lives (such as by playing the lottery without realizing that 50% of the money is not paid out to anyone buying a ticket).

I also appreciated how few people can use mathematics in creative ways, to solve problems. For instance, in our professional practice we developed a new way to forecast certain forms of investment behavior. Over 20 years of doing this work, I have never found anyone who could make a single useful suggestion for how to improve the mathematics of our approach, despite having had conversations with dozens of people with advanced math & statistics degrees who would get benefit from an improved approach. I suspect from this experience that there's a higher level of mathematical thinking that Professor Paulos did not explain in his book that we would alll benefit from learning. Where do we start? I can hardly wait to learn!

An Imaginative Look at the World of Numeracy! - By: Donald Mitchell, 03 May 2004
To me, the most intriguing aspect of this book was Professor Paulos's ability to take simple math concepts that I learned way back when . . . & to show how they could enrich & expand my appreciation of the world around me now. It was like Alice going through the looking glass in the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. There's a lot there that I never imagined. For example, the way disease rates are often described is for those who have survived to 85 years old. If you are younger, your current probability of incidence will be much lower (possibly more than 90 percent lower). Also, you can use the way you design your questions & sample to help eliminate bias (such as by asking about the results of a coin flip & dangerous sexual behavior in the same population). You can also find great humor in the errors of authority figures who misquote probabilities & risks. Plus, you can answer questions that I would never have thought of (such as the likelihood of breathing in an atom that Caesar did).

If you are feeling cowed about your math ability, take heart! Most of the concepts here you can handle. For example, can you multiply two numbers together? You can answer "yes" to my question if you can do so with a calculator. If so, you can appreciate almost alll of the examples in the book.

Professor Paulos has a mind that works differently & more inquisitively from mine, but I enjoyed learning how his thoughts. He thinks about topics like how long it would take dump trucks to excavate Mount Fuji, how many times a deck of cards need to be shuffled to become random, & what the Earned Run Average is for a pitcher who lasts one-third inning & gives up 5 runs. I realized that if I thought about more things like this, I would develop new perspectives on the world.

He makes a helpful attempt to create solutions so that more people can appreciate the world in a quantitative sense. These include using exponents to indicate the size of numbers (such as the Richter Scale does for earthquake strength), refocusing secondary math education to practical applications rather than teaching calculus earlier & earlier, having talented mathematicians teach younger people, & disciplining those who communicate in public to check the mathematical accuracy of what they say.

What do we lose if we don't? Well, those who don't learn a little math will end up in careers that pay a lot less. Social resources will be misapplied to problems that are less serious (obscure diseases & terrorism get a lot more attention to reducing accidental deaths among young people, which is a greater danger). We will make bad resource decisions in our own lives (such as by playing the lottery without realizing that 50% of the money is not paid out to anyone buying a ticket).

I also appreciated how few people can use mathematics in creative ways, to solve problems. For instance, in our professional practice we developed a new way to forecast certain forms of investment behavior. Over 20 years of doing this work, I have never found anyone who could make a single useful suggestion for how to improve the mathematics of our approach, despite having had conversations with dozens of people with advanced math & statistics degrees who would get benefit from an improved approach. I suspect from this experience that there's a higher level of mathematical thinking that Professor Paulos did not explain in his book that we would alll benefit from learning. Where do we start? I can hardly wait to learn!