The overall degree of innumeracy in society is disturbing, but what shocks me is the widespread acceptance of it in polite society. I know people that have spen

The overall degree of innumeracy in society is disturbing, but what shocks me is the widespread acceptance of it in polite society. I know people that have spent years obtaining PhDs and almost gleefully admit they aren’t good at math. I don’t mean that they don’t understand what graph isomorphism is; I mean they don’t know how to divide one fraction by another. The parent article touches on our culture’s writers and journalists treatment of mathematics as a strange, peculiar interest in comparison to say the fine arts. The vast majority of the people we see and hear and read in the popular media seem to reside in a different world where drinking celery juice balances your body’s energy fields. I’m not the worlds most intelligent guy, but I’m glad to have my friends; they’re smart, funny, and at least half can divide fractions. (or is it two-thirds?)