Mathematics is a language.
-
So, when you point out innumeracy I think you should explain it with patience. Explain it understanding that some people who may be well informed and intelligent in other matters might not understand why, for example, decreasing by more than 100 percent is nonsense.
(100 percent is all of something. A 50 percent decrease is half. '100 percent decrease means' it's zero. Decrease by more than 200 percent? means it's less than zero, negative. Negative prices make no sense. )
@futurebird What do you reckon the percentage of people is who understand that the reverse of going up 30% is not going down 30%
-
@futurebird What do you reckon the percentage of people is who understand that the reverse of going up 30% is not going down 30%
Among adults? At least like 70 percent. It's not obvious, and in many cases the numerical difference isn't that great...
-
@futurebird What do you reckon the percentage of people is who understand that the reverse of going up 30% is not going down 30%
This is one of the neat wrinkles of how percentages work, but I think the most important thing to understand about percents is that they allow us to compare changes in quantities of different sizes.
1,000 people moving to NYC isn't the same as 1,000 people moving to a town with a population of 300.
How do you compare those population increases in a way that makes sense?
A fraction could work, but using a fraction out of 100 is very practical and easy to understand.
-
Mathematics is a language. But innumeracy is also a language and our president is fluent.
It's not just that he exaggerates, lies, and says things that make no sense when talking about numbers "often" no this is something deeper.
He is deeply committed to *never* speaking about any statistic or numerical fact in a way that would suggest that it's important to understand how basic math works, or even that it exists at all.
This isn't just ignorance or laziness, it's one of his core values.
@futurebird He's literally done this billions of times.
-
@futurebird He's literally done this billions of times.
It just keeps increasing very strongly. He never uses numbers correctly they are 1000 percent more wrong every day. We are seeing this happening worse and worse it's going down to levels of incorrect that have never been seen.
