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.