Innumeracy is to mathematics as illiteracy is to language.
It is also a nifty little book that I received this Christmas (Thanks Matt!).
It is a wonderful read that employs humor and storytelling to warn us that even the so-called educated among us can fall victim to "confused personal decisions, muddled governmental policies, even an increased susceptibility to pseudoscience".
One of the points that I felt was relevant is the misunderstanding of probability, especially when used to claim that something that has a low probability can be discounted.
For example: The probability of me winning the lottery today is extremely low. But the probability that one of the millions of lottery players will win, (or that I would win if I play a million tickets), is extremely high and virtually inevitable.
One of the ideas behind Intelligent Design is that life is too complex to have evolved on its own - that evolution is therefore improbable. But like the lottery, given the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone, and billions of years to work with, the evolution of intelligent life somewhere is not only highly probable. That it happened on Earth is no less likely than it happening on millions of other worlds.
But enough preaching. It is enough to say that we must question the math that is thrown at us, just as we would question the words thrown about by politicians and journalists. We must all strive to overcome innumeracy!
Previous "I" - Illusion
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