Joe is a little older than the average retail clerk or restaurant hostess who can't figure or even count change. We are creating a generation of people who have lost the basic concepts of numbers, even the linear line represented by the numbers so formidable for poor Joe. I'm sure he feels that a magnitutde 5 star is 2X as bright as a 10, that a quake of mag 4 is half of a quake 8. I'm sure the concept of pi is beyond his contemplation. His only comprehension of 13 billion light years is how far away the real world is.

His attitude was that no one in the real world he lives in has any need to know the difference (especially the relationship) between such usless numbers as 3/8 or 5/8. And this is shown to the world as an expert at something.

The problem isn't entirely his. It also belongs to his bosses, mentors, educators, and the rest of us.

RichH

Too true - only thing I'd query is the magnitude 5 star - wouldn't Joe think it's half as bright as mag 10?

But to carry on the general point, I was talking to an equipment rep the other day who had taken time out from engineering to teach maths, in order to "de-stress" as he thought. A year of it nearly killed him and he was glad to get back to industry!

But that's an aside - have you noticed how if you say somebody is a bad driver or not too hot in bed, it's fighting talk, but they seem to think it's a badge of honour to be no good at maths? Strange. And we had in UK a few years back a Chief Inspector of Schools who in a radio interview couldn't work out 1/2 of 3/4.

Amen! It is very sad that people do seem to take pride in ignorance. I think it must be a little bit of a defence mechanism. I have a case in my own family - my husband and I are both engineers, and three of our four children are scientifically-minded. Unfortunately, my oldest daughter (currently in Grade 9) recently bought herself a T-shirt that says "I'm too pretty to do Math". Thankfully, she's still in Honours Math (not by her own choice), and her desire to do well makes her work at it hard enough to keep her marks up in the 90+ range. I hope she never degrades to the level of this Joe Buck.

Right on. The state of math education is pretty abysmal. I used to do some tutoring to help kids improve their SAT scores and many of even the very brightest often either saw no point in math education or else did not know practical uses for the advanced math concepts they were learning.

Very sad. We are raising a generation of people who do not know how to think critically, write decently or do math. What will the country look like in 25 years? Are these the people who will be in public office or will we have a society that is even more stratified based on education, leaving even fewer at the top?

Your comment "Are these the people who will be in public office or will we have a society that is even more stratified based on education, leaving even fewer at the top?" really scares me. That top stratification doesn't seem to include anyone that could embarass any politician who can't add. Unless you want to sell your brains n a bucket, you have little value to our "society". The guy that can't create a toilet paper holder that will hold a roll becomes an "administrator", makes 2 or 3 times what the guy on the bench will ever make, and you think that smarts as far as being able to thnk for ones-self is of any value?

The most valueable person to our wonderfull corporations is the guy thaqt will steal everything and pass all of the blame on to his underlings. God forbid you EVER use the words "You're wrong about that."

RichH

One thing you cannot leave out of the equation is the fact of liberal feel-good, intentions-were-good, self-esteem-without-accomplishment, left-wing nanny-state mentality dominance of the university system. It is the source of new teachers, and most states actually REQUIRE their teachers to contribute a fraction (not quite 3/8) of every paycheck to the union before they can be hired...speaking of government schools in the US, anyway.

Any time you have non-teaching bureaucrats skimming free paychecks off the top of others' labor so they can pander to politicians while controlling the HOW as well as the WHAT to teach kids at each age, and filtering the selection of which textbooks are allowed to be used thereby controlling indirectly what the publishers include, you have a recipe' for a slow dumming-down of the entire system based purely on a multitude of self-interest decisions made over the course of decades...the only kids who seem to be escaping are homeschooled or have active, involved parents to overcome the handicap of having to attend government facilities. (Not that we don't all have our shining example of those few inspiring teachers who excelled.)

What we get is the girl I handed 2 pennies and a nickel to last night with my $20 on a $4.32 bill...who had to call a manager to figure out what to do.

And then we have otherwise noble programs like "no child left behind" that are being short-circuited and twisted and sabotaged at every turn by those who have NO intention of ever being held accountable for performance.

The two teachers in our family often don't know what to think, so torn are they between not offending their friends and colleagues at work and in the union, and a desire to see some real competition to change things for the better for the kids.

Anything would help at this point - a tax credit against any Property Taxes (that fund the school district) for every dollar you spend on K-12 education would be a good start, I think. At least home owners who are paying the bill would have an instant choice of whether to pay the taxes and let the government do the work, or take their own same money and shop for a better school.

Vouchers would actually be great if anyone could get them through any legislature. The few trials that have been made to try to prove they don't work have instead been resounding successes nearly every time.

Charter schools have been a mixed bag of great success and some no better than the nearest failing regular government school.

Online resources for homeschooling like K12.com I hear are booming. Sounds good to me - leave it to the market to finally come up with some ways around the union and government roadblocks to success. Now if we could just claim the costs against our tax bill...

MillMatt:

The math and science knowledge of the average person is abysmal. And that level of ignorance from a college graduate (?) no less.....

I have no idea what the answer is. But or society is becoming increasingly technically sophisticated, while the general population is falling further and further behind in their comprehension of technology. There are important issues that have to be decided by our society, yet so many voters and policy makers are ill equipped to even understand the issues being debated. There is a mindset about that posits that each person's opinion is equal ... of equal merit ... that there are no "absolutes", or even gradations. Where ignorant people will feel free to debate top experts in a field (not that an expert is infallible) on subjects they themselves either know precious little or are misguided. I do believe they have the right, but then for so many others to give them credence ... Most of the public in the U.S. doesn't even believe in evolution ... forget the science, its a plot by the secular humanists, or an attack on the Bible, or whatever, as if you can't believe in God and evolution... have no idea of what the various forms of "radiation" are .... don't know how a plane flies or a light bulb lights. But if you ask their opinion on nuclear energy, waste disposal (of any kind), energy options, etc, you can be sure they have one. It's frightening in its implications, living as we do in a democratic society.

I don't know where the solution may lie, but I think it has to start in the schools (which in their current state is little cause for optimism).

Joe Buck is no John Madden, that's for sure. A Madden mathematical monologue could have gone something like this: "First, you got the 3/8th - that's the small one. Kind of like the kicker. You gotta have 'em, but they're the little guys. Then you got the 1/2 - that's the one in the middle - kind of like the center. Now, the big guys up on the front line? Well, they're kind of like the 5/8th."

He would also find a way to work in a comparison of the sweat stains on players pants, and talk for 5 minutes about his trip to the hardware store to find a bolt he needed that taught him about "the fractions"

Wow, Hope the center is actually one of the big guys. With regards to the whole joe buck issue, When Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or any of these people earn in a few months what most engineers will earn in a lifetime, and probably much more than most physicists will earn in a lifetime, why would anyone think that math was important in the US. We don't even expect our presidents or congress to have rudimentary skills anymore. I saw a comment yesterday about how engineers in some area are regarded as beneath realtors, to be a realtor you just have to commit to a decision between cosmetology school or realty school for a couple of weeks. I know Realtors in California make substantially more than a teachers, engineers or scientists. So how imporant can people really think math skills are? Americans seem to have come to the conclusion the world is a safe place. We can have the Chinese and Indians developing all our advanced technology in the future and we'll sell everything to the american people who work at Walmart, but are aspiring actors or musicians. Colleges and High Schools are no help. High School administrators want to get their State money and standardized testing leads to years of just test preparation. College administrators need the freshmen enrollment $ and make alot of money by getting unqualified people through the system. Education is a business, and it is the nature of management to find ways to charge more for less substantial return (and then seek a pay raise from the apparent greater profits). One idea i had was that intellectual properties for scientific/engineering properties needs to be changed to favor the scientific/engineering community more (instead of favoring the psuedo arts community so strongly). There needs to be a frivolous clause in intellectual properties, where people can't make claims to intellectual property right over frivolous things like music. You don't see people getting sued over referencing of scientific literature, or theories.

I'm a '65 grad from SUNY. Nothing to brag about. My parents were from Europe and they prized education. My father told me, "They can always take your money but they can't take what you have up here" - pointing to his head. I passed that on to my kids, or at least I've tried to. From what I see from them, We have three, the point was made.

Knowledge is the real wealth, and you can take it with you.

Joe Buck is a moron. Plain and simple.

Hard to believe that someone with a college education doesn't know the difference between 5/8" and 3/8".

The question I have for Mr. Buck is if he was putting together a new bike for his kids and he had a 1/2" wrench in his hands and it wouldn't fit on the bolt because the wrench was to big would he get the 5/8" or the 3/8". Likely answer to the question is that he would pay some one else to put it together. Probably doesn't own a wrench.

Joe Buck - Stupid!

Right on!

'Reminds me of a story an engineer friend said while he was working overseas. One of his co-workers was a really dense guy who somehow managed to find work as an engineer.

The guy, holding a bolt, walks up to my friend and asks him what size bolt it was. My friend took it and did one of his favorite gags. He put it to his nose, took a sniff, gave it back to the guy and said, "1/2".

The guy's eyes popped wide open and asked, "you can smell the size?". "Sure," my friend said. He took another bolt off the table, sniffed it and said, "here, this one's a 5/8 bolt. The smell's different."

When my friend left the guy, he saw him holding the two bolts and sniffing one and then the other.

'Course, we (my other friends who heard the same story) doubted that such a man exists. 'But then you hear about Joe Buck...