No, honestly, this only shows that most people are almost unbelievably stupid and uneducated in even the most basic logic. There is nothing else to say, except call for radical changes in our educational system, along the lines of what Steven Pinker suggested not long ago.
I don’t understand this assertion. The comment in question asserts that massive innumeracy explains the experimental results from the post. I don’t believe that completely explains the data, but it seems like a plausible explanation, so why do you call it “misanthropic”?
The comment in question asserts that massive innumeracy explains the experimental results from the post.
Because it doesn’t seem to me like an explanation at all. What is ‘stupid’ supposed to mean? That’s a thing my eight year old says to people when he wants to be mean. And stupid compared to what? There’s no mention in the article about variation in responses according to intelligence. Does it show that people are uneducated? I dunno, the article doesn’t mention anything about variation in responses according to education.
And these studies are conducted by giving people tricky hypotheticals. If people do badly, can we infer from this that they are stupid, or even that they make similar mistakes when they reason through problems that they care about? Maybe. The article doesn’t say. Heck, none of us even know how we’d do in these studies: it’s very easy to call the people participating stupid when we’re sitting here looking at the answer sheet.
‘False’ may have been the wrong word, because as an explanation it doesn’t rise to the level of being true or false. ‘Misanthropic’ because that’s what it does manage to express: a hatred of human beings.
Because it doesn’t seem to me like an explanation at all.
Doing badly on written word problems can be explained by illiteracy. Why can’t doing badly on math problems be explained by innumeracy (i.e. failure to comprehend mathematical concepts)?
When regression toward the mean is considered a moderate to advanced mathematical concept, I don’t think innumeracy is an unreasonable label of the average person. Certainly it is a reasonable critique of the education system that it does not reliably generate numerate graduates (on parallel with the critique that some specific education systems do not reliably generate graduates who can read).
When regression toward the mean is considered a moderate to advanced mathematical concept, I don’t think innumeracy is an unreasonable label of the average person.
I don’t think ‘illiteracy’ or ‘innumeracy’ is much of an explanation in either case, since in both cases the content of those terms is or is close to ‘does badly in these studies’. (ETA: I mean that we’d need further evidence to show that failure to do well on these tests is a failure to comprehend mathematical concepts.) But I don’t have any reason to argue with what you’ve said. I was responding to Topo (ETA: ugh, 5 years after the fact. Nevermind.)
Doing badly on written word problems can be explained by failure to comprehend linguistic concepts.
Doing badly on math problems can be explained by failure to comprehend mathematical concepts.
I have so many issues with this article. Well, sections anyway. Please do correct me if I’m missing things, but maybe these are a few issues others had, thus why the comment was down voted.
(I apologize for my lack of eloquence and grammar, it’s way too late and I need to head for bed).
The insurance on the clock illustration doesn’t take into account emotion. Yes, emotion has value (unless people are indifferent to depression v. motivated v. pumped).
A. One facet of that: If I lost a clock that had little value, my need for solace, or repayment would be little as I lost little. If I valued the clock a lot, I lost something of greater value, thus I’d have a greater desire to have some sort or recompense.
B. Insurance provides peace of mind. The more value the clock has to me, the more value that peace of mind is.
The disease issue. It’s ignoring other variables playing into the issues—namely how widespread it is. 24.14% doesn’t say how wide spread the disease is. Anthrax has a death rate of 20% with antibiotics (1% without). Yet so few encounter it. Given diseases with that death rate are usually pretty well contained, it’s probably assumed that it’s not widespread. Yet when considering the disease has killed thousands already, it’s clearly widespread and with greater impact.
The play on visualizing numbers and percents is so true. Important point that’s been reiterated in countless ways in countless scenarios. I concur.
Beans—making a good point, but it didn’t clarify the number of times the person could draw a bean. If unlimited, they’d eventually get all the beans, thus percent wouldn’t matter. However, I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but still, giving a more complete picture would be nice. (All the links were broken! I couldn’t even double check it myself!)
… I don’t have time to go through the rest, but most of my beef was with the first few.
I find one of the most common issues I have is that emotions, because they often can lead to illogical answers, get devalued altogether. They lead to improper conclusions only because people suck at understanding, reading, and interpreting them. Logic leads to just as bad decisions when mishandled. When you study emotions as much as you do cognitive logic, emotions can aid in logical reasoning and provide insights that the cognitive mind will miss.
No, honestly, this only shows that most people are almost unbelievably stupid and uneducated in even the most basic logic. There is nothing else to say, except call for radical changes in our educational system, along the lines of what Steven Pinker suggested not long ago.
Why the hell was this downvoted that much?
It’s misanthropic and false?
I don’t understand this assertion. The comment in question asserts that massive innumeracy explains the experimental results from the post. I don’t believe that completely explains the data, but it seems like a plausible explanation, so why do you call it “misanthropic”?
Because it doesn’t seem to me like an explanation at all. What is ‘stupid’ supposed to mean? That’s a thing my eight year old says to people when he wants to be mean. And stupid compared to what? There’s no mention in the article about variation in responses according to intelligence. Does it show that people are uneducated? I dunno, the article doesn’t mention anything about variation in responses according to education.
And these studies are conducted by giving people tricky hypotheticals. If people do badly, can we infer from this that they are stupid, or even that they make similar mistakes when they reason through problems that they care about? Maybe. The article doesn’t say. Heck, none of us even know how we’d do in these studies: it’s very easy to call the people participating stupid when we’re sitting here looking at the answer sheet.
‘False’ may have been the wrong word, because as an explanation it doesn’t rise to the level of being true or false. ‘Misanthropic’ because that’s what it does manage to express: a hatred of human beings.
Doing badly on written word problems can be explained by illiteracy. Why can’t doing badly on math problems be explained by innumeracy (i.e. failure to comprehend mathematical concepts)?
When regression toward the mean is considered a moderate to advanced mathematical concept, I don’t think innumeracy is an unreasonable label of the average person. Certainly it is a reasonable critique of the education system that it does not reliably generate numerate graduates (on parallel with the critique that some specific education systems do not reliably generate graduates who can read).
I don’t think ‘illiteracy’ or ‘innumeracy’ is much of an explanation in either case, since in both cases the content of those terms is or is close to ‘does badly in these studies’. (ETA: I mean that we’d need further evidence to show that failure to do well on these tests is a failure to comprehend mathematical concepts.) But I don’t have any reason to argue with what you’ve said. I was responding to Topo (ETA: ugh, 5 years after the fact. Nevermind.)
Doing badly on written word problems can be explained by failure to comprehend linguistic concepts. Doing badly on math problems can be explained by failure to comprehend mathematical concepts.
You see, this explanation makes perfect sense.
I have so many issues with this article. Well, sections anyway. Please do correct me if I’m missing things, but maybe these are a few issues others had, thus why the comment was down voted.
(I apologize for my lack of eloquence and grammar, it’s way too late and I need to head for bed).
The insurance on the clock illustration doesn’t take into account emotion. Yes, emotion has value (unless people are indifferent to depression v. motivated v. pumped).
A. One facet of that: If I lost a clock that had little value, my need for solace, or repayment would be little as I lost little. If I valued the clock a lot, I lost something of greater value, thus I’d have a greater desire to have some sort or recompense.
B. Insurance provides peace of mind. The more value the clock has to me, the more value that peace of mind is.
The disease issue. It’s ignoring other variables playing into the issues—namely how widespread it is. 24.14% doesn’t say how wide spread the disease is. Anthrax has a death rate of 20% with antibiotics (1% without). Yet so few encounter it. Given diseases with that death rate are usually pretty well contained, it’s probably assumed that it’s not widespread. Yet when considering the disease has killed thousands already, it’s clearly widespread and with greater impact.
The play on visualizing numbers and percents is so true. Important point that’s been reiterated in countless ways in countless scenarios. I concur.
Beans—making a good point, but it didn’t clarify the number of times the person could draw a bean. If unlimited, they’d eventually get all the beans, thus percent wouldn’t matter. However, I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but still, giving a more complete picture would be nice. (All the links were broken! I couldn’t even double check it myself!)
… I don’t have time to go through the rest, but most of my beef was with the first few.
I find one of the most common issues I have is that emotions, because they often can lead to illogical answers, get devalued altogether. They lead to improper conclusions only because people suck at understanding, reading, and interpreting them. Logic leads to just as bad decisions when mishandled. When you study emotions as much as you do cognitive logic, emotions can aid in logical reasoning and provide insights that the cognitive mind will miss.