"I'm not a numbers person"

We’ve all heard—or maybe even said—the phrase before, “I’m not a numbers person.” What does this mean? What are the origins of this unfortunate and limiting mindset?

I believe it starts young.

My latest book, Daphne Draws Data was published earlier this month. I’ve been on the publicity circuit, talking with various people about the book for podcasts, live events, and the like. One line of questions that has come up repeatedly is around when children’s aversion to math begins, and what causes it. I don’t know the answer. I suspect that it is the way that math is typically portrayed in our culture: difficult and boring. On TV, in movies, and in books, the kid who likes math is often stereotyped as the glasses-wearing, friendless nerd.

My attention was recently drawn to a book called I’m Trying to Love Math. I had an immediate and visceral negative reaction to this. I fear that a book titled in this manner only perpetuates the misconception that math is something that should be loathed or feared, propelling the common myth rather than debunking it.

I tried to suspend full judgment, thinking that perhaps it was simply an unfortunate title. After doing a little more digging, however, that is disappointingly not the case. On Amazon, the description of the book begins “Do multiplication tables give you hives? Do you break out in a sweat when you see more than a few numbers hanging out together?” 

The author’s other titles include I’m Trying to Love Spiders. 

Seriously? Math is scary like spiders?

The first line of the book is “If you ask me, math is not very lovable.” The book continues on the following page with, “I know I’m not alone here either. 4 in 10 Americans hate math.” This is accompanied by a pie chart, where an annotation pointing to the segment representing 40% states “That’s like 40%!” (incorrect, it is precisely 40%, but that’s not even my biggest issue).

I’m Trying to Like Math won the Children’s Choice Award, which is an award that school librarians look to in order to determine which titles to carry in school libraries.

I am speechless. (Practically speechless; I’m actually full of words about how incredibly frustrating I find all of this to be.)

While I’ve focused my rant on this particular book, I actually don’t mean to isolate it. What I’m angered by is much bigger than a single book (or even the triad it appears with in “frequently purchased together,” which also includes Math Curse and The Math Allergy). It’s the message that is reinforced all sorts of different ways with children that math is hard and boring and for nerds. 

THIS IS THE WRONG MESSAGE. 

(I tend to avoid all caps because it reads like yelling, but in this case that’s exactly what I’m going for; you might note that I even bolded it for additional emphasis.)

I don’t know if a single delightful dragon who loves drawing data can counter this. But I’m certainly going to have her try. Let’s celebrate math—encouraging it and the logical thinking and problem solving it builds—as a super power, not demonize it as something we should “try to love.”