Dumb, Dumb, Duh Dumb
A brief collection of anecdotal evidence to support the notion that "a little knowledge" would in actuality represent major progress
BY STEVE MIRSKY
The need for improvement in our nation's math and science education is a standard sentiment of our times. Indeed, a close scrutiny of recent news headlines, combined with a personal experience, indicates to me that our nation's math and science skills truly have plummeted to a value of x, where x is some number that is very, very low.
For example, consider the story of four young men who busted into a veterinarian's office in Noblesville, Ind., in late August. The ne'er-do-wells were nailed after stealing what they thought was a painkiller known as OxyContin, which has gotten press lately because some idiots snort it to achieve a heroinlike high. Our callow dopes, however, apparently have an attention span of only three letters, for what they stole was in fact oxytocin, which helps females give birth, produce milk and develop nurturing feelings toward their progeny. As the editor of a major American scientific magazine said after I told him about the confused criminals, "Maybe I'm wrong, but you've got to think that four young guys with enlarged, tender nipples and a tendency to cuddle are not going to fare that well in prison."
Just a few days before the aforementioned arrests came another example of the challenges faced by those who possess an IQ of x, where x is some number that is very, very low. This case concerned a Long Island woman who allegedly decided to end her marriage to her millionaire husband the old-fashioned way--by killing him. The flaws in her plan, however, were more fatal than the plan itself. An aide at a nursing home, the woman told her husband she needed him to help her practice drawing blood. She would, therefore and henceforth, regularly be sticking needles in his arm. But unbeknownst to him, she was shrewdly using dirty needles smuggled out of the nursing home, in the hopes of giving him AIDS.
How greatly she might have benefited from a sound science education. For one, AIDS is not exactly rampaging through nursing homes, so the odds of her bringing home a needle carrying HIV were slim. For another, it is extremely rare to get infected with HIV even after being stuck with a needle that has been in contact with HIV-positive blood: the transmission frequency is only about 0.3 percent. The woman, who merely succeeded in giving her husband more common and easily transmissible conditions, such as hepatitis, was caught after she ran out of patience and tried to hire a hit man to expedite matters. The hit man turned out to be a police informant, and the woman and her husband are now, one might say, legally separated.
Finally, also in late August, I found myself stuck in southbound traffic on the infamous elevated Bruckner Expressway in the beautiful Bronx. This traffic jam was special, as it consisted in large part of people who were ignorant, or at least apathetic, about mathematics. They were returning from Connecticut, which was selling tickets for the $295-million Powerball lottery, to New York, which does not. A few days later I expressed my frustration to Michael Orkin, professor of statistics at the California State University at Hayward and author of What Are the Odds? Chance in Everyday Life. He e-mailed back, "If you have to drive 10 miles to buy a Powerball ticket, you're 16 times more likely to get killed in a car crash on your way than you are to win." Share this statistic with any of the geniuses on the Bruckner, and they might say, "But we weren't on our way. We were on our way back." Besides, with the road so clogged, any crashes would have occurred at a survivable x miles per hour, where x is some number that is very, very low.
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