We all have a maths brain — it’s just some need a reboot

The Chief Economist of the Bank of England, Andy Haldane
Reuters
Andy Haldane15 May 2018
WEST END FINAL

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As chief economist at the Bank of England, you’d expect me to have a head for figures, a maths brain. I need one to do my job of keeping the economy and financial system stable.

But not all jobs need those numeracy skills, right? And not everyone has a maths brain, right? Wrong.

All of us use numbers in the course of our jobs, whether it is working out how long it will take to complete that memo or school drop-off or how long it should take to return inflation to target. All of us use numbers to make everyday decisions, from choice of pasta sauce to choice of phone tariff to choice of mortgage deal. And all of us, I promise you, do have a maths brain.

Lurking between our ears is the world’s best super-computer. Turning it into a maths brain requires no more than a minor reboot. Statistics suggests many people across the UK would benefit from such a reboot.

Staggeringly, around half of all adults in the UK have levels of numeracy no better than those expected of a primary school child. Uniquely among OECD countries, standards of numeracy in the UK among 16 to 24 year olds are no better than 55 to 64 year olds.

This is an important factor contributing to low levels of productivity and pay across the UK. So it should perhaps come as no surprise that the costs of this rising tide of innumeracy, for individuals and for societies, are equally staggering.

Innumeracy has been estimated to cost the country tens of billions of pounds each year. Or around £750 per year, on average, for every household in the UK. By rising to the challenge of innumeracy, we could unlock those gains. But how?

A start would be to begin a national conversation about numeracy. That conversation starts tomorrow, which marks the first National Numeracy Day, organised by the charity National Numeracy. It is the first, I hope, of many. The aim is to raise social awareness of the potential gains to everyone from improved levels of numeracy. National Numeracy Day also aims, crucially, to help people take the first steps towards improving their number skills, to beginning their reboot.

This is not just — or even mainly — about raising standards of maths teaching in schools, however desirable that objective — and it is also not about having the skills to prove Pythagoras’s theorem. Instead, it is about equipping every adult in the UK with the skills and confidence with numbers they need to make good choices, at work and at play; the Essentials of Numeracy. And the easiest way of getting those Essentials is by using some of the free online tools available at www.numeracyday.com.

I used to think I didn’t have a maths brain. Now I do. If I can reboot my maths brain, so can you.

  • Andrew G Haldane is Chief Economist at the Bank of England and Trustee of the charity National Numeracy

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