Saturday, December 14, 2013

Math in the News: The Influences of Politics

Though mathematics is normally a pretty concrete subject, people's intuition for it is not. Probability and statistics in particular is a very difficult area for us to grasp, as you've seen with the Monty Hall Problem I talked about a few weeks ago.

Here is another example of mathematical aptitude being influenced by an outside source, but this time, it is not just a matter of lack of skill or desire to be correct. It is also influenced sometimes by political views, as Kevin Drum shows in this news article. Check it out!

http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/politics-destroys-math-ability

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