Newspapers need to be written by mathematicians

This morning's Duluth News Tribune had an editorial on hiring an outside firm to negotiate contracts, "Duluth can tap expert to negotiate 'modern' contracts"

Chuck Frederick quoted from Forbes that state and local government employees average $25.30 an hour while private sector employees average $19 an hour.
See "Gilt-Edged Pensions".

The Forbes article makes a better case than this that many public employees may be grossly overpaid, but using the above hourly wage statistic is bad mathematics. It is like comparing a police officer's pay to a mall security guard's pay. There is a vast difference in expectation and training. It is like comparing the pay of manufacturing company employees to the pay of retail company employees. There is a big difference in skills and training.

What should be considered is the pay of similar jobs, not all jobs in one group vs. all jobs in another group. Governments have a higher percentage of police officers, firefighters, heavy equipment operators, and judges than the rest of society. Governments have a lower percentage of servers and retail clerks.

I think every newspaper writer should have a copy of John Allen Paulos' "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper" on his or her desk.

See also "Wouldn't you think the Washington Post would know infinitely better?"

An education "then" never was

I'm reading John Allen Paulos' Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. In Chapter 4, "Whence Innumeracy", he gives an anecdote about his own public school mathematical education.

When he was 10, he calculated a pitcher's ERA as 135. He told his teacher about it, was asked to explain it to the class, did so shyly with quavering voice, and was told by the teacher he was wrong and should sit down. The teacher said an ERA could never be greater than 27.

At the end of the season, the local newspaper published all the major league ERAs. Since this particular pitcher never played again, his ERA was 135. Paulos showed the article to the teacher who gave him a dirty look and told him to sit down.

"His idea of good education apparently was to make sure everyone remained seated."

Paulos received his B.S. in Mathematics in 1967, and so this incident occurred about 1955. I wonder if 1955 is in Mallard Fillmore's "now" for "bad education".

Just as bad as Paulos' incident, when I was in fourth grade and nine (1947), a substitute teacher took a vote on the distance to the Moon. I wonder how long ago Mallard Fillmore's "then" was. I don't think Bruce Tinsley even knows when "then" was; he was born in 1958.

See more in Chapter 4 of Innumeracy about shortcomings of math education. The book was published in 1988 when Tinsley was 30.

See also my recent article "If numbers make you number, you'll lose dollars before you holler".