There’s a fascinating article on the BBC this week about knife crime, and a correlation between the fear of knife crime and the fear of maths.
In the UK, knife crime is an epidemic, with every young adolescent male carrying a knife ready to cut, stab and maim you open if you look at them funny. Knives are the new law enforcement, and the police are powerless to stop it.
Or so the papers say.
Now don’t get me wrong, whilst one death is a tragedy and I would hate my brothers or any of my family or friends meeting their deaths in such tragic fashions, I’m refusing to believe it’s that bad.
Why? Because I know the statistics.
If you read the article, you will find that since 1995, the overall crime rate has dropped 42%, and a report published last month stated “The evidence on knife crime contains a number of ambiguities, but combining the various data sets, a rather clearer picture emerges. Despite increased media attention, levels of knife crime have remained fairly stable at around 6-7% of all violent crime.”.
The article goes on to talk about something which I believe in – why are people so scared to embrace maths? Hearing people say “I’m no good at maths”, “I don’t do numbers” and similar sentances makes me dismayed. It’s something written in the british psyche that maths is hard and should be avoided at all costs. The media knows this and takes advantage of it.
Little example, not about knife crime. A few weeks ago there was this piece on the news that a third of accidents on the road are caused by drivers under the age of 35. Immediately the media picked up on it, and said young people should be banned from driving.
Lets think about it though, a third of accidents are caused by people under the age of 35. That means that two thirds of them are caused by drivers over the age of 35. If we assume that at the age of 65 people drive a lot less (because they don’t go to work, free bus pass etc.), then the
Of course, I use stats to prove my point, but people could use stats to disprove me, which is exactly what the media is doing at the moment to prove knife crime is out of control.
I’m not saying that everybody should be able to work out a quadratic equation in their head, or indeed be able to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem, but I believe that everybody should be able to do simple sums, and at least know how to work out percentages. Because at the moment, a lot of the maths people use have actually been worked out to prove a point, and people are believing it.
You wouldn’t believe it if people said “1+1=3″, but I fear that’s what happening at the moment.
Comments: 5 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
Great article!! Kudos to you, that is a sensational post.
Yeah, it’s very interesting how when it comes to statistics and all that people just throw their arms up and believe what they read in the paper… yet, I work in sales. When it comes to money, all of a sudden every man and woman is a mathematician. If people were so bad at maths, then I should be able to rent out a lot more goods… but very quickly they work out the numbers, and decide that they don’t want to pay almost twice the price for the same TV, despite the annual interest only being 8% (on the full amount). Which is completely understandable.
That said I had lady yesterday who believed I had overcharged her on a camera I sold her. The initial deal was $869 including a bag/battery kit. Now I can’t put through the kit at $0, so I put it through at $50, and deducted $50 from the $869 of the camera. At the point of sale when I was writing the invoice out, I sold her the extended warranty for $89. So when we went to the cashiers desk, paid for it, and I went away, I was called back because she was arguing with the cashier that she had been overcharged. She couldn’t work out the simple mathematics, $869 + $89 = $958 – it wasn’t until her husband did the math on paper in front of her that she believed us.
When it comes to their money, they want to know the mathematics.
you do make some good points but isn’t the whole knife crime thing more about the gang culture and how knife crime is beginning to infest itself amoungs the youth of today.
i won’t deny there has always been stabbings but i think that the media, and i pretty much loathe the bastards, are actually trying to do something useful because the majority of these crimes are being commited by teenagers.
Now i don’t know about you but when i a teenager i was much more of a jumper for goal posts kinda kid than trying to knife someone. Liam Gallagher summed it up pretty well on the radio not so long ago, in his day being someone meant being a success and making something of yourself not like today where in order to be someone having killed someone gives you kudos.
I would open up a can of worms if i commented on the societies in which the majority of these people came from so we’ll leave that one alone, don’t want to risk getting stabbed next time im in London
That has got to be the wierdest corelation ever. Maths and Knife wounds. I’m going to keep thinking about this one.
Very good read. People will always manipulate the numbers to benefit themselves.
I feel the same way about written English…