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Loading... INNUMERACY MATHEMATICAL ILLITERACY AND IT'S CONSQUENCESby John Allen Paulos
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Innumeracy is not the inability to count, but rather a lack of a general grasp of numbers and how they work. Its dangers, and they are many, are generally outlined in this book, though it is not nearly as alarmist as it could have been. The target audience is mostly the innumerate and those numerates who are curious or concerned about innumeracy. Though I was familiar with all the mathematical concepts covered, I did learn some new things and discovered some new ways of looking at information. Though far from dense, the writing style is not quite as accessible as I'd hoped, and I suspect most innumerates and math-phobes will pass it by. Which is a shame. (  ) melydia | Oct 28, 2009 |  Innumeracy was a wonderful book! Short, to the point, a great read, and a solid point. While there were a few ideas that pushed the envelope a bit far concerning where innumeracy can lead to; it was for the most part a solid idea. The current state of rampant innumeracy is something that should be fought against. (  ) tyroeternal | Jan 28, 2009 | Just as an individual or a culture can be weak at literacy, so can an individual or a culture be weak at numeracy. Paulos does a generally strong job at delineating how our lack of facility with numbers affects the decisions we make. ( ) kimsbooks | Sep 9, 2008 | An interesting parallel between illiteracy and innumeracy, their respective importance and consequences in daily life. Recommended read. ( ) read2be | Jun 19, 2008 | It’s still an engaging exploration of some concepts. But because he meanders and the pieces do not have the focus of some of his later work, I got less enjoyment. Since the same topics are covered in his A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, I suggest you read that instead. (Full review at my blog) ( )2  KingRat | Jun 16, 2008 | 
 Mr. Paulos is the sort of person who, when he hears that something or other is selling at a fraction of its normal cost, is likely to remark ''that the fraction is probably 4/3.'' He writes that this is often greeted by ''a blank stare.'' He takes it to be one of incomprehension, but a reader of ''Innumeracy'' may suspect behind the look an impulse to throttle Mr. Paulos. Still, there is so much of value in his book that one can easily restrain such an urge. He takes us a couple of steps closer to numeracy, and it is all in all an enlightening place to be.
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But that is not all that drives him. 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 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. His diatribes against astrology, bad math education, Freud, and willful ignorance are leavened with jokes, mathematical or the sort (he claims) favored by the numerate.
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. Only time will tell if the generation raised on these new principles is more resistant to innumeracy--and need only worry about being incomputable. --Mary Ellen Curtin
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:08:03 -0500)
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