{"id":2395,"date":"2010-01-04T12:18:51","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T17:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/the_american_in\/"},"modified":"2010-01-04T12:18:51","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T17:18:51","slug":"the_american_in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2010\/01\/the_american_in\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Innumeracy Epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I see &#8220;Jaywalking&#8221; or some similar person-on-the-street interview segment, I ask myself, &#8220;Are Americans really this dumb?&#8221;<br \/>\nBy and large, the answer appears to be &#8220;yes.&#8221;<br \/>\nBob Sullivan provides more evidence with <a href=\"http:\/\/redtape.msnbc.com\/2009\/12\/when-i-published-gotcha-capitalism-two-years-ago-i-was-in-for-a-big-surprise-as-i-talked-about-systemic-hidden-fee-fraud-al.html?ameritards\">a post on Americans&#8217; inability to do basic &#8220;real-world&#8221; math<\/a> (note the clever &#8220;ameritards&#8221; in the URL&#8211;I think I&#8217;ll start using that).  For example:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Only 42 percent were able to pick out two items on a menu, add them, and calculate a tip.<\/li>\n<li>Only 1 in 5 could reliably calculate mortgage interest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Sullivan speculates that this math deficiency &#8220;played a major role in the housing bubble and the resulting economic collapse.&#8221;<br \/>\nCould things really be [I]that[\/I] bad?  It&#8217;s one thing to need a calculator to figure a tip.  But to not understand your basic mortgage terms?  That&#8217;s dreadful.<br \/>\nIf Americans are as mathematically clueless as Sullivan suggests, we&#8217;ve got a real problem: people lack a fundamental survival skill.  I&#8217;m not familiar with today&#8217;s public high school curriculum, but perhaps we need to feature more checkbook balancing and less algebra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2010\/01\/the_american_in\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to The American Innumeracy Epidemic\"><p>Whenever I see &#8220;Jaywalking&#8221; or some similar person-on-the-street interview segment, I ask myself, &#8220;Are Americans really this dumb?&#8221; By and large, the answer appears to be &#8220;yes.&#8221; Bob Sullivan provides more evidence with a post on Americans&#8217; inability to do basic &#8220;real-world&#8221; math (note the clever &#8220;ameritards&#8221; in the URL&#8211;I think I&#8217;ll start using that). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}