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.
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