The work about polarisation and analysis is really interesting. I think increasing numeracy is important for policy and I have been trying to come to a judgement about your conclusion. I wonder if by framing the question as “what should be our top priority” it may be fair to conclude that to improve policy making fixing hyper-partisanship first is sensible. However, I think it misses the pragmatic issue that improving numeracy is a more straightforward goal, whereas to my knowledge there isn’t a clear route forward to fixing polarisation.
Additionally, the paper by Kahan is interesting but doesn’t address an important question- have the participants engaged their analytical skills when answering the question. Reading around the area starting from the Kahan paper an alternative view is that people make their snap judgment without analysing (the interpretation of the related study from Pennycook https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Lazy%2C-not-biased%3A-Susceptibility-to-partisan-fake-Pennycook-Rand/81fe024b0903ea646249321c7912ed0255a0d2f9). In this context the relationship with numeracy scores might be reflecting their self confidence from their numeracy. If the subjects had been pressed to justify their answer, or indeed if their answers were challenged from the data then we are in a position to state how numeracy changes their views, as at present this is left open.
Fundamentally, if you don’t have the numeracy skills to hand you can’t engage in honest reasoning over data. Unless we believe that peoples views cannot be overridden by their analytical skills then I think that the case for improving numeracy is possibly underplayed.
At my work we often do prizes that either have a small cost to enter, or just require you subscribing and filling in some extra information. What is interesting is that we often get more ppl entering these competitions when the prizes are smaller (say something like a $50 voucher or product valued about the same) rather than when we do big prizes like a TV or even a car. From speaking to ppl we have developed the theory that more ppl enter when there is a small prize because they instinctively believe they have a better chance of winning a small prize than a big one, even though there really isn't a difference built into the process for entry
The work about polarisation and analysis is really interesting. I think increasing numeracy is important for policy and I have been trying to come to a judgement about your conclusion. I wonder if by framing the question as “what should be our top priority” it may be fair to conclude that to improve policy making fixing hyper-partisanship first is sensible. However, I think it misses the pragmatic issue that improving numeracy is a more straightforward goal, whereas to my knowledge there isn’t a clear route forward to fixing polarisation.
Additionally, the paper by Kahan is interesting but doesn’t address an important question- have the participants engaged their analytical skills when answering the question. Reading around the area starting from the Kahan paper an alternative view is that people make their snap judgment without analysing (the interpretation of the related study from Pennycook https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Lazy%2C-not-biased%3A-Susceptibility-to-partisan-fake-Pennycook-Rand/81fe024b0903ea646249321c7912ed0255a0d2f9). In this context the relationship with numeracy scores might be reflecting their self confidence from their numeracy. If the subjects had been pressed to justify their answer, or indeed if their answers were challenged from the data then we are in a position to state how numeracy changes their views, as at present this is left open.
Fundamentally, if you don’t have the numeracy skills to hand you can’t engage in honest reasoning over data. Unless we believe that peoples views cannot be overridden by their analytical skills then I think that the case for improving numeracy is possibly underplayed.
At my work we often do prizes that either have a small cost to enter, or just require you subscribing and filling in some extra information. What is interesting is that we often get more ppl entering these competitions when the prizes are smaller (say something like a $50 voucher or product valued about the same) rather than when we do big prizes like a TV or even a car. From speaking to ppl we have developed the theory that more ppl enter when there is a small prize because they instinctively believe they have a better chance of winning a small prize than a big one, even though there really isn't a difference built into the process for entry
“eg put a million halfway between 1000 and 1 billion”
A solid case for removing people who use log-plots from policy making decisions? :)