By Robert Bériault

Mathematics

Al Bartlett, Professor Emeritus, Physics Department, University of Colorado has said: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function".

I would substitute exponential function with the word mathematics. The popularity of National Lotteries is the most striking evidence for this is.  I submit that people buy lottery tickets because they don’t understand mathematics or the laws of probabilities. 

Take the example of a recent Lottery. This time the prize was $1,000,000 but in order to give the buyer a better chance of winning, the Lottery Corporation announced that they would issue a limited number of tickets, only 20,000, at $100 each.  In normal draws a gambler’s chance of winning the big prize is one in several million.  This time his chances would have been a hefty one in 20,000.  Although this might sound like a big improvement over the Lotto 6/49 consider what you need to do in order to win.

Pick up the ticket you bought last week Place it in your pocket; Put on your coat; Open the front door; Walk to the garage; Open the garage door; Get in your car; Back out and close the door; Back out to the street; Drive to the corner store; Park the car; Get out of the car; Walk to the store door; Open the store door; Walk to the ticket counter; Check to see if your previous ticket is the winner; Discard the useless ticket; Select a ticket; Select a number; Mark your number; Pay your $100; Place your new ticket in your pocket; Walk to the store door; Open the store door; Walk to the car; Get in the car; Start the engine and put it in gear; Drive home; Get out of the car; Close garage door; Open the front door; Walk in; Take your coat off; Place ticket on kitchen counter.

This may sound like a lot of work.  However it doesn’t end there. If you were to buy tickets continually, you would win on average once every 20,000 times. In other words, for each win, on average, you would have to perform the above sequence 20,000 times.  If you were to do this once a week you would win on average once every 384 years. To top it off, in addition to having done all that work, you would have spent $2,000,000 plus accumulated interest to win $1,000,000. And if you were to play only 20,000 times there would be a 37% probability that you wouldn’t pick up the winning ticket.

A lot of people buy these tickets.  A lot of people don’t understand mathematics.

If lack of understanding of mathematics were limited to Lottery tickets, it wouldn’t be so serious.  However, poor mathematical skills have far reaching effects on the natural world we live in and on the choices our society makes.  Al Bartlett shows that people’s ignorance of the exponential function is at the root of exponential growth of the human population and how it will lead to an inevitable population crash.

A poor knowledge of mathematics can also account for the fact that we don’t take effective action against global warming.  If you believe there is just a one in ten chance of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change being correct in their predictions about future natural catastrophes, that is a huge risk and drastic reductions in greenhouse gasses would be required.  Al Gore in his disingenuous film “An Inconvenient Truth” suggests that small changes, like screwing in compact fluorescent lights and driving hybrid cars -- changes that don’t affect our lifestyles -- will make a big difference.  Either he hasn’t done the math or doesn’t understand the math.  If global warming is in fact caused by human activities, then we would have to make monumental changes in our lives.  We would have to return to the way people lived and to the way cities were organized before the automobile.  We would have to greatly reduce our numbers to allow enough farmland to feed the required draw animals and to make up for the lack of chemical fertilizers.

Similarly, a poor understanding of math is at the root of our lackadaisical attitude about depletion of resources.  We’ve used up half the forests, fresh water sources, topsoil, fisheries, oil and metals. Yet, even though humans are eight times more populous now than at the beginning of the industrial age those facts fail to raise alarm in the average person.

The same poor math skills are responsible for people’s lack of understanding of the significance that when an oil field is in decline, its depletion rate is huge:  6 to 14% per year. It is even more difficult for them to comprehend that an aggregate of oil fields will deplete at 3% per year after Peak Oil and that the consequence will be the end of the consumer life as we know it.

Furthermore the same lack of understanding is what stokes their faith in wind power, solar power, liquids from coal, ethanol fuels, biodiesel, methyl hydrates, nuclear fusion, hydrogen or perpetual motion machines as replacements for conventional oil. 

We are presently using up 4 barrels of oil for each barrel we are discovering. This is like withdrawing $4 of your bank account for each $1 you are depositing.  Somehow, this very simple mathematical concept eludes many people. Anybody who understands the underlying math would realize that we are headed for trouble. 

Perhaps they don’t understand what is meant by the concept: “80% of Canada’s population lives in cities and that the end of the oil age will require a complete reversal of those numbers”.

Maybe they haven’t grasped the idea that it takes just 1% of us to run the machines that grow our food.  Then by simple subtraction they would confront the troubling fact that 99 out of 100 Canadians are not involved with growing their food.  If they understood this simple idea they would realize that once oil shortages start, many of us will have to move to the countryside to beg for work

  It is indeed tragic that so many people don’t understand simple math or simple logic.