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Re: [Phys-l] innumeracy



I guess I'd be most concerned with the ones below 10 million. A guess of
around a billion wouldn't be horribly bad -- I'd call that 'ballpark.'

Again, these are issues about how well people remember numbers that they've
read someplace. I think the real issue to focus on is whether people
actually understand things like the factor of 1000 between a million and a
billion, how probabilities work, and the like.

Can one still get that great little book by John Allen Paulos called
Innumeracy? It really makes some wonderful points.

Steve Highland
Duluth MN



----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Highland" <shighlan@uslink.net>
To: "Forum for Physics Educators" <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] innumeracy


I agree that knowing the correct population of your country or the world is
something a bit different from what I'd call 'numeracy." After just a
quick
glance at the values below it looks to me that more are in the ballpark
than
wildly off.

Not sure what standards you would consider being wildly off, but 19/35 were
under 100 million for the U.S. (10/35 below 10 million) and 9/35 over a
billion. I consider all those to be wildly off! ;-)

Rick

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