From: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 16:26:36 -0500
To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
Subject: Leaders' Poor Math Skills Add Up to Bad Public Policy


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Leaders' Poor Math Skills Add Up to Bad Public Policy
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20010611/t000048664.html

By K. C. COLE

     People should stop picking on certain politicians just because
they have poor syntax. Far more troubling are their problems with
math.
     Consider the simple matter of multiplying 2 times 2. Doubling is
as simple as it gets, and it's something that happens to everything
growing at a given rate. If your money is earning 7% interest, the
"doubling time" is 10 years. If the rate is lower, the doubling takes
longer, but sooner or later, it doubles just the same.
     The same simple math is behind everything from population growth
to increasing rates of energy consumption. And doubling adds up
astonishingly fast.
     My favorite dramatization of this ever-present phenomenon comes
from University of Colorado physicist Al Bartlett. He tells the tale
of two bacteria that take up residence in a Coke bottle at 11 a.m.
(Call them Adam and Eve.) They beget and beget, doubling numbers once
a minute. At noon, their bottle is full.
     What time would it be, Bartlett asks, when the most farsighted
politicians in Bacterialand notice that they are running out of room?
The answer is 11:59, when the bottle is still half empty. (One
doubling time away from full.)
     Suppose, Bartlett says, that the bacteria decide to drill
offshore for new Coke bottles and turn up three pristine,
never-before-inhabited bottles. How long before they run out of space
again? You got it: two more minutes.
     Play with the numbers how you will, no matter how many new
resources you discover, so long as the rate at which you are using
the resource continues to grow, you run out sooner than you think.
     (And, as Bartlett points out, there's geometry involved here as
well. If we lived on a flat Earth that extended infinitely in all
directions, we might never run out of energy or oil. But a spherical
Earth has a finite surface area. For this reason, Bartlett likes to
call those who think we can grow forever the new Flat Earth Society.)
     It's not just misunderstandings about multiplication and
geometry that make bad public policy. It's probability as well. For
example, cigarette makers long argued successfully that, since you
can't predict which smoker will die when, it's merely a matter of
probability that someone will get lung cancer or heart disease from
smoking. Similarly, gun supporters argue that having a large number
of guns in people's hands only increases the probability of murder:
Guns don't kill; people do.
     Both these arguments rest on the assumption that probability
isn't a cause. But any Las Vegas casino operator can tell you
different: The only reason that seven comes up more often on a throw
of two dice than any other number is that it's the most probable
combination. Then again, it's probability that made Humpty Dumpty
impossible to put back together again.
     Many important insights have also emerged from a lesser-known
branch of mathematics known as "game theory." True, an understanding
of game theory can help you win at chess, but it's also discovered
some curious truths about, for example, the relative merits of
competition and cooperation. In a series of now-classic studies,
competing computer programs (computers can "play" faster than people)
tried out various strategies for long-term survival. Those that put
an emphasis on cooperation fared much better in the long run than
those that employed competitive, confrontational tactics.
     Game theory may give some insight, in other words, into the
reasons arms agreements have led to 40 years of nuclear peace--and
why politicians should do the math before altering that balance.
     It's probably wishful thinking to suppose that an administration
that hasn't yet hired a science advisor will trouble itself with a
math tutor.
     Still, at the expense of alienating English teachers, it's a lot
more important for politicians to be able to multiply 2 times 2 than
tell a potato from a potatoe--or even what the meaning of "is" is.
     A few lessons in math could easily reveal the folly of thinking
we can solve our energy problems by searching for new Coke bottles in
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example.
     The only lasting solution--at least so long as we live on a
spherical planet--is to slow the rate at which we use up those
bottles.
     It's as simple as 2 times 2.

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