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Innumeracy
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences | John Allen Paulos
4 posts | 2 read | 6 to read
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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Innumeracy addresses our mathematical illiteracy that seems not only pervasive, but (as the author notes) a perverse source of pride for many. From giving a sense of scale (a million seconds tick by in about 11 1/2 days, but ticking a billion seconds take 32 years) to revealing common misjudgments and even fears many of us have, Paulos awakens curiosity and self-awareness. The book is mostly examples, readable & interesting. It's an eye-opener.

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My next nonfiction read. I'm a business/yeah journalist by day so I'm trying to better understand numbers. It's so important!

Marchpane This is a really good book! But I'm a numbers person, so... 7y
PatienceFortitude I'm very much not a number person so I'm curious what my fellow math-averse folks think about the book 7y
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GoneFishing

First, take a deep breath. Assume Shakespeare‘s account is accurate and Julius Caesar gasped “You too, Brutus” before breathing his last. What are the chances you just inhaled a molecule which Caesar exhaled in his dying breath? The surprising answer is that, with probability better than 99 percent, you did just inhale such a molecule.