A Reporter's Math Book

It's possible that studio artists and poets might be more math adverse than journalists, but I'm not sure. Plus, journalists are certainly better at verbally expressing how much they hate math and bragging about how little they know.

So, in that light, I've been thinking about how I ought to write and publish a book for reporters listing all the (few) things they should know how to do with numbers.

I can see a small, fit in your pocked, type book that's easy, fun, and lists the kinds of things a reporter should be able to do if a story has numbers in it. Sorta of like a reporter's notebook, but loaded with how to do things with numbers.

There are things that (most of us) reporters just don't get. For example: Don't you think it's strange that 750 is 50 percent more than 500 but 500 is only 33% less than 750? And what really is the difference between mean and median and when, from a journalistic point of view, is it best (and most ethical) to use which?

As I mentioned in the last post, the Poynter Institute's very good News University offers a free online course covering math for journalists. I have had a chance to look it over and it covers some important material, but if you're anything like me, you'll be able to get through the exercises, but will forget the stuff after about 10 minutes. I need something with me and I imagine that other people might also.

Here are three books I found that seem to be on target:

Math Tools for Journalists by Kathleen Wickham

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos

How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff

I ordered them from Amazon and will report back to you when they arrive.

Wickham's book seems like she might have done what I want to do. If she did, great. I've got other things on my list. However, the book "weighs in" at 188 pages. Not having seen it, I suspect it might be a little more that what most journalists have the attention span to deal with. A sophomore in a one-unit semester long course, perhaps, but not a working journalist, or for that matter, a 21 year old senior. I've tried it.

So I'm thinking of titles. That's the easy and fun part, isn't it? If you have ideas, send them my way, unless you have big plans yourself.

What I like so far are:

Reporter's Math Book

The Reporter's (minimal) Math Book

Reporter's Notebook:
The Least You Need to Know (about math)

And, I'm already thinking about a table of contents.

Here are what seem like obvious topics.

Definitions
Stats
Average
Mean
Median
Mode
Percent Higher
Percent Lower
Pie Chart
Bar Chart
Debits
Credits
Balance Sheet
ROI (return on investment)
P&L (profit and loss)
Simple Interest
Compound Interest
Probability (Chances are, the chances are...)
Tools
Spreadsheets
Relational Data Bases
Ratios
Percentiles
Metric conversion
Currency conversion
Understanding surveys
Margin of Error
Sample
Confidence Interval
Standard deviation
Percent vs. points

I wonder if I'm already getting into more than a good word-loving journalist would even want to know is there, much less know how to do.

I've bounced the idea off of several friends -- all folks in the field (of journalism, not math) and have had both enthusiastic and guarded responses. I'll write about them next time.

Numeracy

I learned a new word: "Numeracy."

It's kinda like literacy, but about numbers. Number literacy. Like I wish I was.

Wikipedia has a good article on numeracy. Plenty of links to other articles about it also.

I was, but shouldn't have been surprised by the amount of scholarship surrounding the idea of numeracy.

One paragraph got my attention because it directly addressed journalism:

"The Poynter Institute includes numeracy as one of the skills required by competent journalists, and Max Frankel (former executive editor of The New York Times) argues that "deploying numbers skillfully is as important to communication as deploying verbs." However, journalists often show poor numeracy skills; for example, in a study by the Society of Professional Journalists, 58% of job applicants interviewed by broadcast news directors lacked an adequate understanding of statistical materials. [8]

That got me thinking so I looked for more.

I found:

"Numeracy exercises for journalists"

A game plan for increasing math literacy in the newsroom

A Little Math Lesson for Newsies

And the Poynter Institute's terrific News University offers a free online course covering math for journalists.

I haven't had a chance to go into those websites or others in any depth at all, but in briefly looking at them, I thought that math-adverse journalists could something else -- a simple verbally based book on math for journalists. So, I thought to myself, I bet I could do that.

I'll tell you about how that's developed during the last 24 hours in my next post.

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Meantime, I bought the book, Intermediate Algebra: Concepts and Applications, seventh edition$137.45. Dang. It's $106 on Amazon. Cheaper on Half.com. When I was in the bookstore, one woman was almost screaming at the person she was with about the price of textbooks. She was so right and I wanted to tell her so, but she didn't seem in a real receptive mood. Textbook sales seem to be a national class rip-off. I wonder if there is anything to do about it.

I Gotta Buy the Book - Retail

I got on the phone to get the story about the $135 textbook.

The best way, I figured, was to actually communicate with Professor Lapeyre. I called the college and they couldn't find his name in their directory. Then I called the Math Department. The nice woman who took my call couldn't find his name either. She checked with several people there and eventually figured out that the course was being offered through "The Community Campus." I should call them.

I did, and they did verify that the section I was signed up for was theirs. But they couldn't find Professor Lapeyre either. That person gave me Paul Welch's name. It didn't say in his listing, but apparently he is head of the math department.

I gave Dr. Welsh a call and he cheerfully picked up his own phone. I introduced myself and said I wanted to contact Professor Lapeyre. Dr. Welsh confirmed that Lapeyre was indeed hired -- Welsh interviewed and hired him --- but he couldn't give me his phone number. He also said he might not yet have a Pima College email account. He did confirm that Lapeyre was a physicist, but he thought he was still working and was younger than a retired prof ought to be. I'll get the answer to that later. He also said the correct pronunciation of his name is "La - PAIR."

He said I should call the bookstore back and ask for the Community Campus section.

I did, asked for the Community Campus Section, gave the course number, and was handed over to a supervisor. He confirmed the book and the price: $135. It was a whole package with a workbook, CD, video, and who knows what else. And no used copies were available. OK, I guess I gotta bike down and make the purchase.

Meantime, I checked online and there are a bunch of free tutorials about intermediate algebra. I should have all the help I need, but still wonder if I should have started at ground zero -- beginning algebra.

A Book about Back to School

This morning's New York Times business section ran a story about a guy who left his journalism career to pursue a Harvard MBA.

Philip Delves Broughton wrote "Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School." I haven't read the book, but the Times story said, "In 2004, dismayed over the gloomy state of newspaper journalism and his own career prospects. Mr. Broughton, then 32, quit his job as Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London and enrolled in Harvard Business School."

Being a good journalist, he wrote a book about it. It's now (Aug. 17, 2008) at 129 on the Amazon rankings. That is a spectacular accomplishment in itself. My book, "Race and Class on Campus: Conversations with Ricardo's Daughter,"made it up to the low 400,000s. Now it's at 1,699,074. Those kinds of rankings (mine, not Philip's) are great for humility. Not too great for launching a writing career.

O.K., so I'm not gloomy about the state of newspaper journalism or my own career prospects, I'm not quitting my job, and I'm going to Pima Community College rather than Harvard Business School. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. And perhaps writing about it.

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Tomorrow I plan to call Pima College's math department to try to get contact info for Professor Gerald J. Lapeyre. There has to be a story there, and I need to figure out how to get the textbook for less than $150.

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I'm still working on paperless, calculator-free addition. The exercise I'm on consists of 15 sets of 12 two-digit numbers in columns. My lack of accuracy still surprises me. I'm working on the first five sets only and I haven't yet got all of them right.

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I think I want to find other people who have learned math late and learn about their stories. If you've done that or know anyone who has and who might be willing to tell me about it, please pass along my email address (rochlin@arizona.edu) and ask them to drop me a line. Do people under 50 say, "drop me a line?"

It All Adds Up!

So I can finally add well enough to move on beyond exercise 13 in "How to Calculate Quickly." I keep asking myself, "Why can't I add the numbers right every time. They're just two digit numbers and it's just addition."

So, this morning, for the 25 columns, I made myself slow down and I allowed myself to re-do a problem if I wasn't confident that it was right. A couple of times I got four different answers. I can't be that dumb or careless. But I was. So if I got the same answer twice, or in a couple of instances, three times, I went with it. Even with all that, I still got two wrong, but that gave me 92 percent and personal permission to move on.

The next exercise was to add 19 to randomly arranged numbers 1 through 99. I sailed through that. Next up, exercise 15, more two-digit addition with longer columns. Way longer. I'll report later.

I put my book purchase decision off for a little bit. I decided to email the professor to verify the name of the book and ask whether an earlier edition might work.

The instructor is listed as Gerald J. Lapeyre. I couldn't find a bio on the Pima College Web site. On Google, I found a retired physics professor from Montana State. Looking deeper I found some minutes from a Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education meeting from September 21-22, 2000/ One entry said:

"Authorization to Confer the Title of Professor Emeritus of Physics upon Gerald J. Lapeyre; Montana State University- Bozeman." Cool. An old guy. Like me.

Turns out that Professor Lapeyre also has authored several physics research papers.

I was curious about his academic interests and found this on the Montana State Web site:

"Professor Lapeyre's research in the solid state and surface science laboratory focuses on the electronic states and electron interactions in solids and at surfaces. A strong emphasis is placed on quantum properties of MBE grown III-V semiconductor surfaces. The principal spectroscopies used are polarization dependent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (PARUPS) in the far and extreme ultraviolet spectral range and high resolution low energy electron loss spectroscopy (HREELS). LEED, ESCA, and Auger are used for multiple sample analysis. Two sources of photon flux are available. In the Montana State University laboratory, gas discharge lamps and x-rays are used. The MSU lab group is also a user group at the Synchrotron Radiation Center at the University of Wisconsin, where the group has its own beam line which covers the spectral range from about 5 to 1000 eV."

I didn't understand a word of that either.

I wonder if my teacher will be his son? Or by amazing coincidence, another human named Gerald J. Lapeyre. Or, did professor Lapeyre retire to Tucson and decide to teach a community college algebra class just to keep busy.

I sorta hope it is him. I've been wanting to engage in a discussion with a physicist about the big bang, that they all believe it. My question is basically: Is there a word for the circumstance where all assumptions are apparently correct and all the math is done correctly but the entire process proves a phenomenon that is absurd on its face? Like the big bang theory.

The Textbook Costs WHAT!!@#$%^

I went down to Pima College's downtown campus to prove I was an American citizen. That went well. A woman at the "welcome" desk examined my documentation, signed the form and kept it.
I always like being at Pima College. It is such a different world than the one I am exposed to either with my friends or at work at the University of Arizona. I don't think there are any places in Tucson, or perhaps Arizona, were more different kinds of people hang in spot. Young, old, all different races, people from all over the world. People just trying to make their lives better through education. It's inspiring just being there.

I thought it would be a good idea to head over to the bookstore and buy my Math 122 textbook. I found the spot and a young woman offered me help. She walked me to the shelf. The book she showed me was Intermediate Algebra 3rd edition by Tussy and Gustafson. It was marked at $154. I couldn't believe it. She could tell. She, treating me like a nice older guy, certainly older than her father, was kind enough to show me the used versions. They were ONLY $115. I thanked her for her help and got the hell out of there.

(The following is posted about a day later than the words above. We had a huge storm that knocked power out for about 30,000 people in Tucson. We lost power at about 8:20 last night - as I was typing - and got it back about 3:00 this afternoon. We did fine, but in Tucson in the summer, life is better with air conditioning than without.)

Picking up the story, I headed down to the computer commons and figured out how to sign on. I immediately went to Amazon and found a copy of the book - I think the same edition as the one in the bookstore - for $1.99 plus $3.95 for shipping. I couldn't believe it and said, "What the Hell" and bought it with one click.

The bookstore price of the textbook convinced me more than ever that I don't want to ever force my own students to purchase textbooks. Obviously I don't know the finances, but it seems like a rip off on the face of it and I'm not going to be an enabler of ripping off students.

After I got home, it occurred to me that not every Math 122 professor would necessarily use the same book. I'd only invested about 5 bucks so I wasn't that concerned. I got online, and sure enough, the book listed for my section was different. Dang! But I'll deal with that later. There is plenty of time before class starts.

Meantime, I'm still struggling with exercise 13 in How to Calculate Quickly. I only missed 4 out of 25 today, 84 percent. But I'm not moving on until I can get better than 90 percent. That means that I'll only get to miss two problems which will give me a 92.

Algebra. How About Addition?

A whole lot of years ago I bought a book called "How to Calculate Quickly: Full Course in Speed Arithmetic," by Henry Sticker.

As I got into my latest Math Quest, I tracked the book down and looked it over. It is made up of a series of exercises that supposedly train you to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, quickly and in your head. The sort off thing that people's parent's and grandparents used to be able to do before the days of $2 calculators.

I noticed that the last time I tried this (yes, I've had an approach-avoidance relationship with numbers for a long time) I made it up to exercise 7. There are 382 of them, each harder than the last.

Right now, I am on number 13. It should be simple. It consists of adding columns of six double digit numbers in your head with techniques I have already practiced. It's just addition. Don't second graders do addition double digits?

There are 25 sets of numbers in this exercise. I forced myself to add up all of them before checking my answers. I missed 11. To figure out how pitiful my performance was, I wanted to know my percentage of correct answers. I figured, in my head that each answer was worth 4 percent. OK, that gave me 54 percent, right? Except it didn't. As I was sitting here typing, I checked that on a calculator, and yes, the answers are worth 4 percent each, but missing 11 and getting 14 correct gave me 56 percent.

I am in more trouble than I imagined.

Thinking about Infinity

Sitting at a computer, listening to Willie Nelson on Pandora.com, and thinking about infinity. Not bad.

Even though I got through college basically skipping math and science, I still have always spent time thinking about the kinds of things that math supposedly holds the answers to. Like infinity.

I like the idea of infinity because the idea is one of those things that that make really smart people crazy and less smart people invent wonderful stories like god, the big bang, and black holes.

So, a couple of weeks ago I was in Oceanside, Calif. with Gail, my wife, and Muriel, my mother in law. We stayed at a fancy condo and it came with books and sure enough, there was a book about infinity. It got my attention.

The book was A Brief History of Infinity by Brian Clegg.

The book was readable (amazing) by a math illiterate like me. Clegg goes through a whole history of how people through time have dealt with the idea of infinity. Infinity's earliest references, definitions. problems, how it relates to calculus, and the key people who have tried to wrestle with the concept of infinity through the ages. He even talks about how the infinity symbol came to be.

Clegg begins each chapter with a pithy quote. Here are two of my favorites:

"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations.


"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Attributed to Albert Einstein (reputedly said at a press conference in the 1930s).

The book was a great diversion, but I need to start thinking about doing math rather than reading about it. It's time to actually register for a class. Later.

Are You a High School Graduate?

The Pima Community College downtown campus offers assessment tests on a walk in basis every day until 7 p.m. I decided to give it a try and see where I stand.

When I decided to begin this number journey, part of my reason was to experience new things and new worlds. Little ones, and perhaps big ones. I got my first little one quickly.

I marched up to the testing center and said I wanted to take the math assessment test. The first question the (very nice) person behind the desk asked me was, "Are you a high school graduate?" That was new. I don't recall ever having been asked that ever, even as an 18 or 19 year old. I might have blinked at the question. In an instant I wondered whether I wanted to mention my MBA or Ph.D. or that I was a professor. I caught myself and said, "yes."

That person was kind enough to look up my Pima College ID number. I had one because I had taken first year Spanish and two classes about Dreamweaver, the web design program. She then asked what test I was interested in. I said algebra.

In moments I was directed to a computer in the testing lab. There were three sheets of scrap paper, a pencil, and a calculator on the desk. The screen give directions about getting started.

After the first three questions I walked back to the nice lady at the desk and explained that I needed an easier test. I was already over my head. She told me not to worry -- that the test was programmed to work me into easier questions if necessary and because the program was created by the folks who designed the ACT, it will accurately place me in the appropriate level of class. But, she said, I needed to answer each question, to get to the next one.

I slunk back to the computer and soldiered on. I guessed the answers to the next several questions -- pretty much in fear that I might guess right, and would make the computer place me in a class that I had no business being in. Finally, I got some answers right and then some more. I guess I worked my way down to my level. Soon, in fact in only 16 minutes and 49 seconds (it said on the print out of my results) I was done.

My score was 49. That, of course meant nothing to me.

The woman who I was becoming more familiar with, told me that score placed me in "intermediate algebra."

Yikes! I was sure I should have landed in beginning algebra. But no, she assured me, I was right in the middle of the intermediate algebra range on my score and I should do fine. I did take some reassurance in the fact that you don't get college credit for what I now learned was officially math 122.

O.K. Next task: Find a class.

Where to Start?

Because I work at the University of Arizona, I thought it would make sense to sign up for a class through the Math Department. I got online and scanned their courses and couldn't tell where I fit.

The UA offers a math assessment test that attempts to determine where you should land when you sign up for a course. I suppose similar tests are offered in languages also. Makes sense. I clicked the link to sniff around.

There are two "practice tests" that allow you to get a general feel for how it works and get a general idea of where you fit. Here's how they explain it:

"There are two different Math Readiness Tests: the MRT A and the more advanced MRT B. Your choice of test and your test performance will affect your placement
code. (Our placement process will also take other factors into consideration.) "

I looked at the "easy" test A, tried a few, had a good chuckle, and said, "Wow. I've got a long way to go. It would be silly to even give that test a try. I couldn't do one.

Fortunately, Tucson has a great community college. I went to the Pima Community College web site and continued my search there. They had a whole slew of math courses, many of which indicated that no college credit would be given for that class. That sounded reassuring.

I found the Pima College assessment test page and clicked onto their pre-algebra test. Not bad, I could do it. Next I went to the elementary algebra page. Barely. College algebra, not a chance. OK, the next thing to do was head on down to the campus and take the test.

Wondering about Math

Thanks for landing here. This blog is about my new adventure with numbers that will start in earnest in about two and a half weeks.

Math came easy to me as a kid. One of my best teachers ever was Miss Cronin for seventh grade math. She taught me about the magic of logarithms and how to use a slide rule to multiple digits. I thought I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, partly beasue of a great eppisode of "My Three Sons" with Fred McMurry. And I really liked my slide rule. For the last 15 years I've wanted to write a New Yorker Article about the person in the world who made the last ever slide rule. I also wanted to write a book interviewing famous scientists about their first or favorite slide rules. I probably won't get to that because they are all starting to die.

My eighth grade math teacher wanted to talk about poetry. We learned about inspirational poetry. He wanted to form "the whole human being" rather than teach math. Well, I formed as a human being. My math talent didn't.

I made it through college, for all practical purposes, without ever taking a math or science course. I learned how to work the system, and a ton of other good stuff. But not math. Seth, my 22-year-old son passed me in math when he was in about sixth grade. My wife was a math minor in college. They both know all kinds of things I don't. I'm not competitive, but I still wonder what I'm missing.

Truthfully, I can't think of a time in my life where I've actually needed math. I can't think of a time where any of my friends, other than the engineers, have ever needed math. But, still, for some reason , I'm drawn to it.

I tried to read a book about calculus. Not how to do calculus, just about calculus. Couldn't get through it. I just finished a book about infinity. It was called A Brief History of Infinity. Got through it and loved it.

I was having a drink with a history professor today. He said he was very happy thank you being a math illiterate. I'm happy also. But still curious. What do those squiggles mean? The weird looking E? The elongated S. Do people really make sense of those formulas all over blackboards in movies like "A Beautiful Mind? How do smart guys use math to prove something as nutty as the big bang and actually believe it? Is math, once you actually do it, less fun today because computers do it, or more fun because you can do more stuff and ask more questions?

Right now, I can use a calculator and find square roots and percentages and all that. I can sometimes figure out one x but not if there is a y in the hood. I like the idea of a "pure language" like I imagine mathematics is. But I also wonder whether, the more you get into it, the less pure, or more grey it gets, like so many other things.

I'm 58 and I work with words and pictures. Right now I teach journalism at the University of Arizona. This coming semester I am taking a cut in my course load to pursue a "creative activity." I am choosing to pursue math.

Next, I'll tell you about my trip to Pima Community College to take the math assessment exam.