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  3. Innumeracy

EBOOK

Innumeracy

Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

John Allen Paulos
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Pages
144
Year
2011
Language
English
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About

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 them results in misinformed governmental policies, confused personal decisions, and an increased susceptibility to pseudoscience of all kinds. 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.

Related Subjects

  • Essays
  • Mathematics
  • Adult Nonfiction

Extended Details

  • EditionFirst Edition
  • Lexile1360L

Reviews

"Our society would be unimaginably different if the average person truly understood the ideas in this marvelous and important little book."
Douglas Hofstadter
"Like carrying on a conversation with an engaging, articulate math whiz who easily shifts from the profound to the funny."
Christopher Farrell, Business Week
"The innumerate will surely profit from this entertaining book."
Morris Kline, The New York Times Book Review

Artists

John Allen PaulosAuthor

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