It’s shameful when politicians try to cultivate fear with spurious statistics. This article from The Atlantic shows the longer-term trend is clearly one of improvement. People, the world is not so scary as they would have you believe.
Wonderful tale by Ben Orlin “Math with Bad Drawings”, of a creature exploring the world of numbers, very much in the spirit of “Flatland”.
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/01/20/the-number-line-a-journey/
This thought-provoking blog post accurately describes one of the most important reasons for mathematical (and other) education: for the habits of thought and not always only for the content.
Numeracy, and a numerate approach to understanding the world, becomes a habit also. Keep asking: “is that a big number?”
https://medium.com/@jeremyjkun/habits-of-highly-mathematical-people-b719df12d15e#.njlr8pyp5
Thanks to Andrew Steele (@statto on Twitter) for this website, which puts into context how much (little!) the UK spends on science each year. Take a look for yourself and ask “are these big numbers?”
£10.4 bn per annum: Is That A Big Number?
https://scienceogram.org/summary/
/./itabn/answer?magnitude=10.4&multiple=G&unit=GBP&measure=a