It’s a myth that journalists, as a group, are numerically illiterate

Godfrey Braganza, an engineer, says he is now convinced journalists have little or no talent for numbers.

He recalls a journalist writing about a truck loaded with 10,000 tonnes of cargo moving on our roads and being fined heavily by NTSA for overloading.

“I explained that that was the weight of a building with over 100 floors and the truck would have sunk into the ground before it even moved.”

He also cites a story headlined “Floods have killed more than 100, State says” (Daily Nation, November 29, 2019, page 10).

The figure of 100 is based on information in the story: “The government spokesman said mudslides killed 43 people in West Pokot … while seven others are still missing. ‘This is the correct figure. Our officers have been on the ground talking to the affected families,' he said... West Pokot Governor John Lonyangapuo, however, puts the death toll at 58 and the missing at 12.”

So how did the headline arrive at more than 100 dead, Mr Braganza asks. The government figure is 50 dead if you include the missing persons.

Governor Lonyangapuo disputes this and puts the figure at 70 including the missing persons. The headline writer added 50 and 70 and arrived at 103.

“This was then rounded down to 100,” he explains. “Fair enough. It’s a nice easy number to type and read in a headline, but the journalist did not get his maths right.”

He’s right. The headline writer — not the reporter — looks like he’s mathematically challenged. Mr Braganza further says the consequences of numerical errors could be serious, especially in stories about census results, election results, government expenditure and so on.

“I suggest news items and features of importance be well checked to avoid the consequences of basic errors,” he advises.

Mr Braganza reinforces the oft-repeated suggestion, or myth, that journalists are mathematically challenged, or that they lack the ability to understand numbers and perform simple computational operations.

I, too, can come up with examples of journalistic innumeracy or lack of ability to reason with numbers.

But I don’t subscribe to the theory that journalists, as a group, are mathematically challenged. It’s a myth.

I know of NMG journalists who have acquired high numeracy skills particularly those who specialise in financial and business reporting or data-driven journalism.

Elsewhere in the world, it was a journalist, not a statistician, Darrell Huff, who, in 1954, wrote the book, How to Lie with Statistics.

An excellent introduction to statistics for the general reader, the book is laden with examples and outlines errors often made in interpreting statistics and how these errors may lead to incorrect conclusions. It is one of best-selling statistics books.

All the same, Mr Braganza does have cause to complain. There are just too many examples of journalistic innumeracy in our media, ranging from basic errors in fundamental arithmetic such as addition, subtraction and multiplication, to lack of ability to reason and apply simple numerical computations and concepts such as averages, percentages and percentiles.

There have also been cases where journalists have failed to report a story completely or meaningfully — or even not at all — because they did not understand the data involved.

But the main reason for the journalistic innumeracy is not innate impairment. Neither do they collectively have the disorder called dyscalculia — difficulty in learning or comprehending arithmetic, or numbers. It is the way journalists have been recruited.

Until recently, our journalists were recruited from among liberal arts graduates with no maths background.

In fact, there’s anecdotal evidence that many young people joined the profession because they hated maths and wrongly thought journalism was such a career.

The lack of numeracy skills among some of our journalists is also related to the fact that journalism education, following the British tradition, did not include numeracy skills.

Only recently have some schools of journalism in our universities started teaching courses such as “Maths for Journalists”, “Basic statistics” and “Economics for Journalists”.

Many of our journalists, in fact, lack numeracy skills because they’ve not been required, or motivated, to improve their computational skills — not because they suffer from any related impairment.