Innumeracy
I was looking through the Denver Post's opinion section a few days ago, and I stumbled across a letter to the editor about President Obama's economic policies. President Obama has asserted that his economic efforts have saved 150,000 jobs, but 1.6 million jobs had still been lost. According to the letter writer, this meant that the number of jobs saved was merely 0.09 percent of the total lost.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you're reading this, you're probably decent at math. So I don't need to tell you that 150k/1600k = 0.09375 = 9.375%. I also don't need to tell you that a percent isn't entirely appropriate there anyway, since the 'jobs saved' aren't a portion of the jobs lost.
But seeing the letter there did make me wonder. The Denver Post got the letter, and either their editors are equally terrible at math, or they thought that the misrepresentation of data wasn't worth mentioning.
When did we, as a society, get to the point where not understanding math is okay?
