Review: Innumeracy

Okay I lied, that title wasn't clever at all. I couldn't make Innumerology actually fit, though.

For starters, I managed to read this in a day, which is a definite plus when you're doing a maths degree. On the downside, if you're doing a maths degree then a lot of the actual maths is familiar.This did not stop me from severely underestimating how long it takes to level a mountain, however, due to a mix-up between feet and metres and a severe overestimate of the size of a dump truck. So apparently, I have been afflicated as well.

The main thesis of the book is, of course, that as a society we (and by "we" he means "Americans" though to be honest it's almost as bad here) are horribly innumerate due to a widespread fear and misunderstanding of maths. The misunderstanding, for once, is that maths is not fun rather than that maths is about numbers and shapes and graphs and things it very ostensibly is about unless you're a formalist*. I'm not sure whether it would do a very good job of convincing a person who wasn't already convinced of the need for better maths education, but on the other hand it convinced me that I'm actually quite bad with numbers.

That's the trouble really with these books, they're mostly read by people who agree with the main thesis already. I doubt The God Delusion was read by anyone but atheists**, but then maybe this is my own inclination to read things I agree with surfacing. Anyhow, the examples are well chosen; I still have to override my instincts to answer the probability questions correctly. It's very readable, and he's modest about his opinions which is nice for once.

Okay yeah bugger it it's taken five days to write this I'm publishing it and hang the consequences. As you can tell I point out my own flaws in order to disarm people.

Oh, and it gets 7/10

Love to all maybe three of you if any,
Bev

*Formalists are very silly people who existed a few decades ago and thought maths had nothing to do with the real world. This is nonsense as maths is applied everywhere and abstracted from things that are in the real world.
** And theists mocking it, like geeks do with Twilight.

By Way of an Introduction

Of course all my posts are going to have titles like this. At least one will be called The Body Politik even though I was pretty sure that was something to do with Marx until I googled it and found out that not only was it nothing to do with him, but I've spelt it wrong too. Hopefully, though, I will spend less time on pretty wording and more time on pretty sound ideas, and while I enjoy terrible puns I will never use them to make a point. My sentences, however, will run on for miles because I read too much Gaiman in my youth and he never read a style guide.

If somehow you have stumbled across this blog and have not met me in person, I am a short, curvy*, opinionated, grumpy lady-person** with no indoor voice and a fondness for footnotes borrowed from Terry Pratchett and the previous head of that society I run. I study Maths, like people and have far too many hobbies and too little control of my lungs.

If you don't care what I'm like in person (sensible since you could be on Mars for all I know), most of what you need to know is I have a lot of opinions, some of which are substantiated. The things I'm actually qualified to talk on are some bits of Maths, less bits of science, quite a lot of popular science books*** and what it's like to be me. This blog will be a mixture of book/tv reviews, opinions on the occasional thing I notice happening in the world and maybe my actual life if I feel I can trust the internet not to let my parents find my blog. They would be utterly shocked that my floor is currently visible and I did some work yesterday and attempt to prove I am in fact a pod person.

I think that's everything, and anyhow I'm actually really sleepy now. The next post will maybe be a review of Innumeracy, or it might be another thing. Planning never really seems to work.

Many wishes,
Bev

P.S. If you do know me in real life and decide to read any of this blog out loud in a "hilarious" manner I will not be impressed and will in fact be genuinely quite angry.

*Some of my curves are even concave
**Look, women are 40 and girls are 10. Lady-person will do.
***There are literally 20 examples that all these books use, and then about 5 extra for the maths ones. And yet I keep reading.