OK this not a normal entry, it’s a cry from the heart!
Details #
So numeracy is ability to work to greater or lesser extent with numbers. My cry is why it is that so many psychology therapy practitoners don’t think this belongs in our field. I believe the all managed to hand over correct cash and check their change (before that went over to electronic money), some of them, darts players can subtract from 301 faster by far than I can (I’m rubbish at arithmatic though I think I am numerate), all can read time off a clock and dates off a calendar, do their accounts and their tax returns (which terrify me).
So one thing I am saying is that there various aspects to numeracy. One aspect is arithmetic and I realy am poor at arithmetic, i.e. the basics of addition (OKish!), subtraction (not so good), multiplication (OKish) and division (OK for rough estimates, poor if you want the correct answers to three decimal places. Then there are things like estimation of rough quantities (why I say that I can tell you roughly what 157 divided by 51 is: “roughly three” and then we get into algebra (which rescued me at school level maths: largely taking away the numbers and putting letters in I think removed a layer of fear and shame for me. Out of algebra we can get to statistics (another fun thing for me as long as I can steer clear of the really heavy algebra and maths theories).
Oddly, I think the prevalent anxieties and rejection of numbers in our professions, our practices leaves our field vulnerable to people telling us x or y is true about what we do, and perhaps that we have been doing is rubbish, we largely either just go back to rejecting the whole number or just grumble and feel no energy to understand what is being said and how it might be useful (though no doubt hugely oversimplified) or might be complete rubbish.
Hoping to help with these prevalent issues about numeracy was part of our motivations when Jo-anne and I wrote the OMbook and our last chapter: Chapter 10. A ‘snapshot’ review: Constructive critique as a core practitioner skill (pp. 149-163) was designed to encourage practitioners, ideally from the recently qualified through to those with decades of invaluable experience, to engage with quantitative data analysis.
We need more though don’t we? Could we ever have some very basic applied numeracy requirements to start trainings (not leaving that to psychologists and the dwindling numbers of psychiatrists and other medics entering the field)? Could we offer really useful and supportive, and affordable or free, packages that would de-shame this arena and build people’s confidence for those who have been told that they can’t do what’s needed. (For 99% of our profession I am sure that is untrue and just residue of one function of schooling to separate people, too often by existing priviledges). Can we build on the idea that things don’t need to be “qualitative vs. quantitative” but that, as with buying loose vegetables and fruit, our world is really always mixes of “qualitative and quantitative” where the mix, and how best to use the quantitative and the qualitative vary enormously and are about what we want to learn.
Try also #
These are really some of the things that require a little numeracy, but not as much as you fear!
Chapters #
Really runs through the whole of the OMbook.
Online resources #
I guess a lot of what I put here in this glossary is created in hope it will help with this. For those developing their numeracy for our work:
- Among other things my Rblog develops various statistical and psychometric things, and some purely geeky things, more than I can in glossary entries.
- A lot of the apps in my shiny apps are designed to save you from calculating things yourself and most have some information explaining what the app is doing.
- For those using, by definition those who have quite a lot of confidence in their numeracy, who are using the R system for statistics, my CECPfuns package is a mix of simple things, things that already exist in R but are perhaps not easy for non-geeks to use and things specifically for our field that I don’t think exist elsewhere in R.
Dates #
First created 5.xii.25.
