Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences | John Allen Paulos

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences | John Allen Paulos | A must

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Innumeracy: Mathem...

	Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences John Allen Paulos Hill and Wang, 2001 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 75 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

Sprinkling his discussion of numbers and probabilities with quirky stories and anecdotes, Paulos ranges freely over many aspects of modern life, from contested elections to sports stats, from stock scams and newspaper psychics to diet and medical claims, sex discrimination, insurance, lotteries, and drug testing. Readers of Innumeracy will be rewarded with scores of astonishing facts, a fistful of powerful ideas, and, most important, a clearer, more quantitative way of looking at their world.

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Innumerate masses

Any professional and an academic especially, will tell you that our society underestimates the value of their field. However, John Allen Paulos has a much stronger case for his argument - we rely on mathematics and statistics in even the most mundane circumstance of everyday life, and yet most people are largely ignorant of the common mathematical principles. In essence, they are innumerate.

Consequently, most underestimate the plausibility of coincidences, random occurrences, and why, paradoxically, the unlikely is not unlikely to happen. Pseudosciences, ESP, and TV healers to name a few, have all taken advantage of this situation, and we need to fight back.

John Allen Paulos offers a brief introduction to the basics of probability theory, and a few other important mathematical concepts. Also, sprinkled throughout the book are numerous examples from real life with applications of these concepts. It's a light read, and you will benefit greatly from picking it up!

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A must

This book explains why we are so easily manipulated. Follow the numbers and a larger truth emerges.

Very good book

I felt like I knew about numbers before the book, and now I realize that I need to review and study numbers! I asked a bunch of friends about some of the simple problems in the book and found that many of them could not figure it out! Definitely read this

Good despite the self-referential inference to innumeracy

An otherwise interesting, thoughtful book is marred by the phrase that seems obligatory in most popular mathematical books, "the occasional difficult passage can be ignored with impunity." As the title suggests, this book addresses the general public's inability to deal with numbers and their uses. To provide another excuse for avoiding "difficult" mathematics really tends to defeat the purpose of the book and could possibly be considered as a psychological "put down." Are these passages really important to the reader or are they in some manner more important to the author and merely serve to distract the reader? Most often, as is the case in this book, such passages have reasonably comprehensible explanations. Why not use the space to provide another paragraph of explanation?
With this initial hurdle addressed, it should be pointed out that Paulos does a very good job in presenting interesting examples of the use and misuse of numbers, many of which are used in our society, and to some extent are being used to shape it. For example, consider the fact that in general female workers earn approximately 59% the salary of males, which has been used as the argument for stiff equal pay legislation. This fact alone does not take into account the additional information that a greater percentage of women work part-time and many have only recently entered the job market and so have yet to work their way up the hierarchical job ladder. Many other examples deal with the continued popularity of pseudoscience, despite the alternative "reality" that all the "evidence" for it can easily be explained by random variations in the data.
Written in the author's relaxed style and sporting an occasional pun, this book should be read by anyone concerned with the general lack of mathematical sophistication among the general public. Unfortunately, the conditional probability that a person will read it, given that they are themselves innumerate, is no doubt quite low.

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A Good Look at the NUMBERS!

Numbers - hearing that word makes a lot of people feel a certain numbness in their brains. Well, at least that is true for a rather large portion of the Earth's population. The human populace seems to be divided between those who love numbers and those who love words. There are perhaps a mere handful that can lay claim to loving BOTH with equal passion.

And it is for simply this reason that whenever a Mathematician comes along with a certain passionate feel for language, his works seem to suddenly adorn the shelves of even the most innumerate literary reader. People from one camp, often wonder how the other lives, and thinks. John Allen Paulos happens to be one of those people who has ventured where others of his peerage dare not tread: the world of the Mathematically Illiterate.

In this book, he attempts to look at how numbers simply don't seem to register with some people. In particular, how statistical probability seems entirely unrelated to our associated fears about daily existence. Although this book was written around 1988, and most of the actual numbers may have altered somewhat since that time (the number of people dying annually from smoking, for instance) it is easy to see why a large portion of people simply switch their brains off when numbers are involved: the truth is simply too shocking. Would you ever get into a car, knowing that you had a one in 5,300 chance of dying in an accident? Or, would you ever light up your next cigarette knowing that you had a one in 800 chance of dying as a result of that activity?

J.A. Paulos not only shows you the numbers but also takes a mental microscope to certain misconceptions on what the numbers are telling you. Being blind to figures is one thing - but not seeing things correctly, can sometimes be even more dangerous.

One thing is for certain when you are done reading this book: you WILL look at the world you live in differently. That is, unless you are among those who already use numbers to make sense of the world around you. For me, the book was somewhat of a vindication of my point of view on Life itself. If you want to know anything at all about it and the world you live in - you simply HAVE to look at the NUMBERS!

(I would have given this book FIVE stars had I only read it sooner... say back in 1988 when I was in High School. It would have made my life A LOT easier, back then!)

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