Comment by gorpomon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorpomon | Hacker News Reader

Is this is a sad illustration of American's numerical illiteracy? Or is this just another argument for doing away with fractions and using a decimal system?

This anecdote is a common one to share when the intent is to bemoan the intelligence or decline of America, but I am starting to think there's more to this story.

Consider a few points:

First off-- being bad at math doesn't mean a general lack of intelligence. I've met plenty of college educated, liberal minded people who openly say that math is their weakness. I've met people with masters degrees who struggle with math. The American student loan crisis should be evidence enough that even college educated people struggle with math.

Second-- the decision to buy a burger is not one that is often carefully measured and considered. It's more of a "do I pull off this highway right now to get this burger?" and in that moment, you're acting more on instinct that rationality. So in that moment yes, 1/3 < 1/4, it's not ideal but our brain makes a lot of other more serious fallacies.

Third-- does anyone here really doubt that if you explained to those focus groups that 1/3 is larger than 1/4 they still wouldn't understand? I don't. I'm sure those focus groups quickly did understand, but the conclusion drawn was that unless it was explained to the broader public, everyone would make the same incorrect initial assumption.

Fourth-- let's just be honest, fractions are confusing. 1/3 > 1/4 is confusing to read and understand quickly. I still can make this mistake from time to time. In the special case of 1/4 vs 1/3 even text is confusing. "Quarter pounder" just sounds larger than "third pounder", "quarter" is a heftier word. If you don't think sound informs meaning, why do so many sports cars have "Z" in their model name instead of "K"? The only way this would be really clear is if McDonalds was calling it a ".25 pounder" and then A&W could launch a ".33 pounder"

In my opinion, wielding this anecdote as an example about the sad state of anything, people, intelligence, America, etc, is ill-informed. If it's unfortunate that American's often confuse fractions, it's even more unfortunate that the confusion is easily turned into a powerful meme that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I'm convinced that most people who think they are bad at math only think that because math is typically taught in a way that makes it seem tedious and useless.

Not only that, but studying math takes discipline, commitment, and practice. You can’t passively learn math. To a certain extent, mathematical illiteracy is encouraged in society by the standard trope “I’m bad at math.” Almost everyone is bad at math. The difference is that some people understood math is the best way to precisely understand the world and worked to understand it.

I think that's more like it. There have been many attempts to reform math curricula over the years and you still end up with a decent percentage of (at least sometimes otherwise intelligent) students who shrug their shoulders, grit their teeth, and resign themselves to being "bad at math."

Mind you, I also think there are differences in natural aptitude and the degree to wich on connects with the subject. Speaking for myself, I mostly did well through high school math--geometry proofs less so--but mostly just got by on the more advanced math I needed for an engineering degree.

(Then I tutored a group of students in business school who basically handle high school level algebra.)

Is this really an American specific issue? Do people not see problematic levels of innumeracy in other countries among the poor? It's not exactly obvious to observe if you're not waist deep in it. If you're in a moderately well off environment the idea that someone can't do fractions is pretty absurd.

> This anecdote is a common one to share when the intent is to bemoan the intelligence or decline of America, but I am starting to think there's more to this story.

No. Absolutely not. The lowest common denominator of intelligence should not define our approach to mathematical syntax. Fractions are important.

I think this is more of an entertaining fable than factual and analytical.

If we’re going to do away with fractions, can we also fix time? What kind of insanity makes this true?

12am < 10am < 11 am

It's technically correct, since am=ante meridiem="before noon". And midnight, of course, comes before noon. You can call it 0am, but then you'd have to call noon 0pm which is weird. Plus, remember most analog watches in the world have a big "12" on top.

The obvious fix would be switching to 24hr.

There's no reason you have to kill the 12. It would work to just have 1:00 be the first hour of the day, have the day be 1:00-12:59am followed by the same as pm. 1:00pm is "meridiem". No change to analog watches.

Obviously there's zero chance of switching to that at this point from a pragmatic point of view but it does just work out fine.

Given an AM/PM 12 hour system, unless it's obvious from context, the best thing is usually to write noon or midnight. 12am and 12pm in isolation can absolutely be confused. Even if I know the convention, I don't know if the person writing 12am does.

What does am mean?

It’s currently 1300, an hour ago was 1200, two hours was 1100

Yeah but it’s 2021/09/14 21:10 where I am, perfectly big endian for me

I do doubt that people would understand even once it was explained.

I've seen way too many people's faces glaze over immediately as soon as a number enters the conversation.

"Would you rather get 1 for every 3 dollars given away, or 1 for every 10? 1/3 is more than 1/10."

People would still mess this up en masse. I'm just saying.

> another argument for doing away with fractions and using a decimal system

so what? you are imagining a law that says you must name your food in decimals, not fractions? What does “doing away with fractions” mean in your imagination?

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