A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

by John Allen Paulos
Hennepin County Library paperback 203 pages
genre: non-fiction, analysis

Not sure where I read about this book, but the concept intrigued me. I couldn't read more than a few chapters, though. This book made my brain work too hard and I honestly didn't understand some of his analysis of news stories. The one I really like (and that stuck in my brain as an educator) was asking people to estimate the population of a country, but starting with an "anchor." When "people were asked to estimate the population of Turkey. Before answering, they were presented wiht a figure and asked whether the actual number was higher of lower. Of those who were first presented with the figure of five million, the average estimate was 17 million; of those first presented with a figure of 65 million, the average estimate was 35 million." People use data as anchors to actual information, even though they are not based on fact. (Turkey's population at the time of the study was 50 million.)