did you know that the U.S. GDP is about ten quadrillion dollars?

Here and here you can find some rather amusing (and utterly appalling) stories of encounters with innumeracy. And here‘s a post expressing surprise at how widespread the inability to handle numbers is, even among those who really do need to be able to handle them.

I’ve encountered this problem often enough that I’m not much surprised by it anymore. Some people just don’t seem to be able to get really abstract things like math. And fortunately much of life can be lived quite nicely without having to get too involved with numbers (though I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult to function well without mathematical abilities). What I do find surprising, though, is how often innumerates will adamantly insist they are right in a dispute that clearly relies on mathematical abilities. I’ve encountered this sort of thing a number of times (and the first post linked to above provides several anecdotes of such misplaced obstinacy). I’ll have a dispute with someone that relies on some arithmetic and it will be perfectly clear that my disputant does not know how to work with numbers and that I do, yet my disputant will insist that he or she is right. I find this bizarre. I take it that if I disagreed with someone who was illiterate about what an author said on a given page, the illiterate person would usually be smart enough to concede. Why not innumerates? Is it that illiterates feel stupid, given the high value placed on literacy in our culture, and so they are less confident and more used to giving way?

Sydney