From RationalWiki –
Innumeracy is a term used to refer to a growing trend in the inability of people to understand numbers, statistics, and probabilities. The first use of “numeracy” as an analogue to literacy was in a 1959 report by Geoffrey Baron Crowther[1] and the derivation “innumeracy” was coined by Douglas Hofstadter[2] and popularized by the book of the same title by John Allen Paulos.
This site is an ongoing project, for the purpose of gathering examples of innumeracy and to start a dialog discussing how we can find ways to bring numeracy to the population. Please note, we are not associated with either Douglas Hofstadter, nor John Paulos. I am a fan of both gentlemen, but do not know them personally.
More important, this site was inspired by the encouragement of members at Mathematics Educators, a site within the Stack Exchange community. Many of the examples will come from the discussion there titled Examples of Innumeracy. I hope to build a membership of readers who will offer their own examples from their own experience.
I found this example of innumeracy in the wild.
Article title: TIL 31% of Americans polled in October 1964 “disapproved” of the Civil Rights Act. Another 10% polled as “Don’t know.”
Innumerate comment:
58% approval means either significant numbers of black people disagreed with civil rights (which obviously isn’t the case) or less than 50% of whites supported it.
Reason it’s innumeracy: White people were about 88% of the US population in 1964. So even if an unlikely 100% of the non-whites were in favor of the Civil Rights Act, it still means that at a minimum, 52% of whites were in favor of the Act.
See https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/qa418e/til_31_of_americans_polled_in_october_1964/hh3lwu3/