Innumeracy

John Allen Paulos coined the phrase in his 1988 book of the same title. On page 3 he defines innumeracy as "an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance". This condition is typified by the expressions "I was never very good at math" or "I'm a people person, not a numbers person."

ABC's John Stossel let's us know that not much has changed in the last 19 years.

To demonstrate that, "20/20" ran an experiment. We asked people to put on blindfolds and then to pick up a red jellybean from one of two plates that held a mixture of red and white jellybeans. We offered $1 to anyone who could pick up a red bean.

Here's the catch: While one plate held 20 jellybeans and the other 100, the plate with 20 beans had a higher percentage of red ones. We put up signs that told people this clearly: "10 percent red" of the small plate and just "7 percent red" of the big plate.

Surprisingly, even with the percentage signs in front of them, a third of the people picked the plate with 100 beans.

What people saw overwhelmed their ability to think abstractly about probability.

That's just painful to read.