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Innumeracy

Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

John Allen Paulos; With a New Foreword by the Author

Hill and Wang

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ISBN10: 0809058405
ISBN13: 9780809058402

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208 Pages

$19.00

CA$25.00

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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.

Reviews

Praise for Innumeracy

"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

"This admirable little book is only 135 pages long. You can read it in 2 hours. Chances are that they could be among the most enlightening and even profitable 120 minutes you ever spent."--Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times.

"He takes us a couple of steps closer to numeracy, and it is all in all an enlightening place to be."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

Reviews from Goodreads

BOOK EXCERPTS

Read an Excerpt

Innumeracy

1 Examples and Principles
Two aristocrats are out horseback riding and one challenges the other to see which can come up with the larger number. The second agrees to the contest, concentrates for a few minutes,...