Yes, I resented this; and I resent now the matter-of-fact
way in which we accept the ignorance of mathematics
shown by our present teachers—the press.
At every election in which there are only two candidates
a dozen papers discover with amazement this astounding
coincidence in the figures: that the decrease
in, say, the Liberal vote subtracted from the increase
in the Conservative vote is exactly equal to the increase
in the poll. If there should happen to be three
candidates for a seat, the coincidences discovered
are yet more numerous and astonishing. Last Christmas
a paper let itself go still further, and dived into
the economics of the plum pudding. A plum pudding
contains raisins, flour, and sugar. Raisins had
gone up 2d. a pound, or whatever it was, flour 6d.,
and sugar 1d. Hence the pudding now would cost
9d. a pound more!
Consider, too, the extraordinary antics of the press
over the methods of scoring in the cricket championship.
Wonderful new suggestions are made which, if followed,
could only have the effect of bringing the teams out
in exactly the same order as before. The simplest
of simple problems in algebra would have shown them
this, but they feared to mix themselves up with such
unknown powers of darkness. The Theory of Probability,
again, leaves the press entirely cold, so that it is
ready to father any childish “system” for
Monte Carlo. And nine men out of ten really believe
that, if you toss a penny five times in the air and
it comes down heads each time, it is more likely to
come down tails than heads next time.
Yet papers and people who think like this are considered
quite capable of dealing with the extraordinarily
complicated figures of national finance. They
may boom or condemn insurance bills and fiscal policies,
and we listen to them reverently. As long as they
know what Mr. Gladstone said in ’74, it doesn’t
seem to matter at all what Mr. Todhunter said in his
“Arithmetic for Beginners.”
Going Out to Dinner
If you are one of those lucky people whose motor is
not numbered (as mine is) 19 or 11 or 22, it does
not really matter where your host for the evening
prefers to live; Bayswater or Battersea or Blackheath—it
is all the same to your chauffeur. But for those
of us who have to fight for bus or train or taxicab,
it is different. We have to say to ourselves,
“Is it worth it?” A man who lives in Chelsea
(for instance) demands more from an invitation to
Hampstead than from an invitation to Kensington.
If such a man were interested in people rather than
in food, he might feel that one actor-manager and a
rural dean among his fellow-guests would be sufficient
attraction in a Kensington house, but that at least
two archbishops and a revue-producer would have to
be forthcoming at Hampstead before the journey on
a wet night would be justified. On the other hand,
if he were a vulgar man who preferred food to people,
