We fall easy prey to charlatans in all areas of our lives. Innumerates make misinformed decisions. Worried parents can rest assured that basic skills are absolutely there. That's the reason people don't like math. Doing the proverbial 400 long-division problems is as much like studying math as diagramming sentences is like studying English.
People have a narrow notion of math.
It is not glorified bookkeeping. It is the formalization of logic and common sense. Joyce Kasman Valenza is the librarian at Springfield High School in Erdenheim. Her column appears each week in tech.life. 1998, Philadelphia Newspapers Inc .