Gecko Hide and Seek

Gecko Hide and Seek by Gill McBarnet

This is a "find the gecko" book. There are 10 scenes (from 1 to 10) with the equivalent number of geckos. Then at the end there is a 1-10 count of geckos. It can be fun to count the geckos, but that is all that there is.

Number: The Language of Science

Number: The Language of Science by tobias dantzig

Numbers are a basic part of our lives today. Where did they come from? This book was originally written almost a century ago. However, many of the topics covered date back millenia. Numbers and language evolved and became more complex. While people have some innate number sense, the adoption of linguistic numbers was a significant breakthrough. We still use base-10 today because we have 10 fingers. Concepts like 0 and the use of algebraic variables had a significant impact on the use of numbers, but didn't come into place until much later. Rational, irrational and imaginary numbers came about only after significant work. Infinity was an interesting concept that took a while to come about. Primes and other components also played a key role and gradually came about. Many of the basic concepts we think of today were centuries in the making.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

People are generally bad with numbers. They can make simple logical mistake with numbers. This book calls out of a few of the more common "math errors" that people make and see. Smart people can take advantage of this lake of numerical skill and play odds to their benefit. 

Part of the problem with math is education. Elementary education does not typically attract people that are good at math. We thus end up with math education taught by those that never really learned it well. College professors tend to be off in their erudite world. Perhaps we need to swap out the elementary school math teachers with college profs to help everryone.

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

Human beings have trouble understanding numbers. Our brain haas a basic number system of one, two, three, four, five, and a lot. Distinguishing between the various "a lot"s is a challenge. This book focuses on the best ways to do it.

Humans can hold about 7 numbers, give or take a few in memory. Rounding numbers helps us to include numbers in memory. Comparing 10,000 and 4,000 can easily be stored in memory. 10,273 and 4,164 are much more challenging. Even better is reducing numbers to smaller human scale numbers. Instead of 10,000 to 4,000, a ratio of 5 to 2 is a much better scale. We also have great difficulty comparing big numbers (like a million and a billion). Making it into stories of smaller numbers helps the point. (Spending 50,000 a day, it would take 20 days to spend $1 million, but more than 50 years to spend $1 billion.)

An even better step is to relate the numbers ot something that people would understand. Florence Nightingale mastered this in advocating improved medical conditions. Statistics of improved soldier mortality rates were augmented with  comparisons to wartime mortality. Things seemed much more real when expressed in additional men killed in battle.

Comparing large numbers to items that people understand makes them even more real. The "understanding" can depend on the audience. For covid-19, different places would use different terms to express appropriate social distancing. "One surfboard" is more real than "6 feet". (However, some places got a little too cute with numbers like "1.5 mountain bikes.)

Another example was using analogy to express the size of the Evergiven that blocked the Suez canal. Ths ship is a quarter mile long. However, this is not a length we commonly understand. Calling it "as long as the Empire State Building laying on its side makes the distance much more relatable."

Knowledge of how the brain understands numbers can help make communication of ideas much more powerful. However, to be successful, the underlying story must be valid. (Stories of "Bezos earns enough to buy a car every second" sounds powerful. However, would you also say that this month as Amazon stock fell he lost the equivalent of two Teslas every second?) By having solid numbers with a good story we can get our point across best.