Temple University mathematics professor John Allen Paulos, author of several books, including “Innumeracy” and “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper,” to get his take on the numbers surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
We report numbers precisely, down to the digit, as if they were extremely accurate when we know that most of the numbers are undercounts. He wrote in the Feb. 18, New York Times, that such precision can be dangerous.
Paulos offered the hypothetical example of the guard at the Museum of Natural History telling visitors that the skeleton in the lobby is 70 million and 8 years old. He knows because he was told, eight years earlier, it was 70 million.
Such precision isn’t necessary because most people understand estimates, Paulos said. We’re used to seeing polls that have margins of error.
President Trump continues to say that the U.S. is doing more testing than any other country. But “the relevant number is the percentage, not the raw number,” Paulos said.
But even when computing percentages we face a “nebulous fraction.” Because we don’t always have accurate numerators (the number on top of the fraction) or denominators (the number on the bottom).
Let’s take the percent of positive tests. Is it the percent of those tested? The percent of everyone? We know that testing levels vary widely, depending on where you live. If everyone hasn’t been tested, the figure could be confusing.