Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.59 (545 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0809058405 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 180 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-10-04 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
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.. 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 t
Paulos admits that "at least part of the motivation for any book is anger, and this book is no exception. It remains to be seen if Innumeracy will indeed be able, as Hofstadter hoped, to "help launch a revolution in math education that would do for innumeracy what Sabin and Salk did for polio"--but many of the improvements Paulos suggested have come to pass within 10 years. 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. I'm distressed by a society which depends so completely on mathematics and science and yet seems to indifferent to the innumeracy and scientific illiteracy of so many of its citizens." But that is not all that drives him. --Mary Ellen Curtin. "I think there's something of the divine in these feelings of our absurdity, and they should be cherished, not avoided." Paulos is not entirely successful at balancing anger and absurdity, but he tries. This is
A nice little book if it finds the right audience Toby Cornish Someone recommended this book to me and I can't remember who it was; it turn there are certain people I know to whom I would do the same, and others that I would warn off.If you are earnestly interested in learning some practical math yet utterly uninitiated in numerical ways this may be the book for you. If, however, you are firmly stuck in your innumerate. "Could be much better" according to Ursie. I like the idea of this book, but it just isn't very much fun to read. The math guy should have asked for assistance from a language guy to write this.. Must-Reading "Innumeracy" goes beyond the expectation of a non-mathematician, user-friendly book. It wakes up your awareness of what passes as "statistics", "experts", "economics", and various numeric analysis in the popular media.I bought the book after seeing it referenced in another science book. I was interested in a basis for how much bias, or straight ignorance, w