‘How many months in 5 years’

Given a monthly search volume of 1.1K, it turns out this is a pretty trendy thing to ask Google.

The reason, I think, might surprise you: because it’s not because many people don’t know the answer is 5 x 12.

It’s because the people doing these searches don’t presume that simple arithmetic can help them solve their problem to begin with, because many seemingly intelligent adults shudder at the thought of math.

For many, math in the real world reminds them of math in school. With tests and formulas and the very emotional risk of getting it wrong. (Not to mention the pernicious idea that they have never been—and can never be—good at math).

And so just as with reading for leisure, people avoid doing it for practice and for fun. They won’t spend an afternoon trying to get better at it, and so they effectively commit themselves to a lifetime of underpeformance at the cost of bad decisions when it comes to anything to do with math.

So it’s no surprise that people are notorously bad at time-management or discrete math or calculating the interest-rate of their mortgage. And it’s no wonder we fork over thousands of dollars per year to pay for people and software to do those things for us.

It's a shame that school (and to an extent, our culture) teaches many of us to avoid math (and reading, and writing) at the expense of giving us a (keyword) standardized education. Perhaps assessing the long-range effects of testing, rote-instruction and disengaged learning can help us figure out a way to do it better.