A couple of years ago, when an NPR journalist was interviewing me, the conversation turned to quantitative matters. The reporter said, only half jokingly, “We journalists are innumerate and proud.” 🙂
Some times it shows, badly. This morning a radio reporter stated, “Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders among South Carolina African-Americans by an almost 9-to-1 ratio.” Actually, that vote was 86% to 14%, just above 6-to-1, not 9-to-1. A very troubling outcome for Bernie, to be sure, but an even more troubling error in quantitative reasoning by someone in the Fourth Estate who should know better.
One of my favorite quotes is from Chen Lixin, an engineering professor at Northwestern Polytechnic University in Xian, who has warned that China produces students who can’t think independently or creatively, and have trouble solving practical problems. He wrote in 1999 that the Chinese education system “results in the phenomenon of high scores…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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