Arithmetic incompetence is widespread

Innumeracy is prevalent in our society. A particularly disturbing episode was earlier this year when Ed Balls, at the time Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families, taunted his opposite number Andrew Gove across the floor of the House of Commons by holding up the following calculation as being a hard sum: “What is two and three quarters minus one and two fifths?”. It’s soluble in one’s head in less than a second if one has been taught how to handle numbers. The secret of maths is to manipulate the numbers you have to put them into a form which makes the problem you have easily soluble. Two and three quarters is 2.75, one and two fifths is 1.4; 2.75 minus 1.4 is 1.35 QED. The scandal was compounded by the fact that Andrew Gove did not shout out the answer “1.35” before Mr. Balls smugly instructed him that the answer was “one and seven twentieths”, thereby demonstrating that neither side of the chamber of parliament is accomplished in arithmetic. What was even more disturbing was that before becoming responsible for the nation’s schooling Ed Balls was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a job for which one would have thought that numeracy was a precondition. Perhaps the subsequent trajectory of the country’s economy can be explained by this event. What a shame that Puppet Maths wasn't available to enable these members of Parliament, at an early age, to become competent in arithmetic.