Number Blindness

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Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/

We are entering the age of the trillion but who apart from seasoned number crunchers knows what it is?

Mortgage debt in the UK is nearly a trillion pounds
while computers can store terabytes. Yet making this number meaningful
to ordinary people is a major challenge.

You’re not kidding….

It was with a heavy heart that I started listening to this item.

This is the girl who gets confused between multiple thousands and
millions and couldn’t say the number of pounds which her house was
going to cost her because she couldn’t articulate the figure.

People often don’t understand when I tell them that I’m not good
with numbers. They usually don’t understand the statement above.

What it means is that I could not say £163,000 – I could not equate the symbols to one hundred and sixty-three thousand pounds.

This is partly because I cannot understand or quantify the amount – but also because I find ‘reading’ numbers difficult.

I have a C grade GCSE in Maths and a grade
4 IB Subsid in Maths Studies – but they were a struggle. I still get a
hollow-stomached blind panicky feeling as soon as I feel out of my
depth and suddenly everything feels at one remove and as though I am
listening to the speaker though cotton wool.

But, there is hope, I am not alone – apparently it’s common for
people not to understand figures of a size beyond which they normally
deal with.

Also of interest was the Food Programme covering School Dinners.

I felt that Irene Carole, Chair of the Local Authorities Catering
Association, came across particularly badly. She was defensive and only
concerned with the bottom line: explaining that school dinners is a
numbers game.

In comparison, the media-friendly and self-effacingly apologetic Ian El-Mokadem of Compass Group came across as a saint.

Just goes to show what media training and a prepared communications plan can do.

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Filed under Numbers, Radio, Radio 4