Innumeracy in the USA and Why Most Don't Care

First, the rival fast food chain was A&W, and the title is "Why Do American's Stink at Math?"

In the USA, our history has been defined by the idea of self sufficiency and growth.  From our origins, we have often been very self reliant and thoughtful.  As the nation grew, new thought processes entered the heads of many, one such idea being capitalism.  In our country, capitalism is the driving force behind our economy, and in turn is directly responsible for social settings.  The rich and the rich will mingle, the middle class will keep to themselves etc.  Capitalism relies on a large working class, (the 99%) to maintain large corporations and keep them running so that the economy doesn't falter and we can continue to mass produce goods of every nature for distribution.  However, most of this work does not require much math.  Every job in America requires reading and writing capabilities, and is considered a standard due to it's constant every-day, every-minute use.  However, in the real world, where you're only expected to keep the machine running, and leave the brain work to the 1% that reaps the benefits, most people are left not needing math.  People aren't upset about innumeracy because it's not viewed as a necessity by the masses.  It's not viewed as a necessity by the masses because the masses don't need to be smart.  It's actually WORSE if we're smart, because then the few people who sit at the top have to deal with us.  No, to push one button all day over and over, or organize documents for your direct boss, that doesn't take much thought of math.  We are conditioned to accept the thought of not needing thought.  "if we keep ourselves to ourselves and never question the order, we'll get by."  This sheep mentality is what a system like capitalism in our country requires, and universal numeracy could endanger that.  People need to be able to read and write as the most basic skill, so that is considered a MUST, and even to do basic jobs, so the nation as  a whole enforces the literacy of people.  Numeracy is not such a basic skill, and despite the ease with which we could make it such, it could counteract the goals desires of the men and women who sit on top our country and economy: to make more money for themselves.  It all goes back to education, its easier to to herd the cattle than the thoughtful humans.

Big: Not the Tom Hanks One

So how big is big really? And how can you wrap your mind around the concept?  Let's start with the idea of water and some basic chemistry.  One mol of water, is 6.022 x 10²³  molecules of the stuff.  For a visual idea, not that it'll help much, that's 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water.  That's a lot of water... or is it?  Actually that many water molecules is only about 18 grams of water, or a small sip.  Weird, all those molecules, and yet still such a small amount of water.  So here's the tricky part.  Imagine the following: oceans.  Yeah, that's a LOT of water molecules.

Let's try the math on this.  Every cubic milliliter or centimeter of water is 1.0 grams.  There are 133,800,000,000,000 cubic centimeters (and in turn milliliters) of water on earth at any given time.  So that's 1 gram per cubic centimeter, so 133,800,000,000,000 grams of water.  For reading, that's one hundred and thirty three trillion, eight hundred billion grams of water.  So, if there are 6.022x 10²³ molecules of water in ~18 grams, we can do the math.  133,800,000,000,000/18 = 7,433,333,331,111    So now multiply THAT number by the number of molecules of water in a mol, and you get (6.022x 10²³) x (7,433,333,331,111) = 4.4763533 x 10³⁶  molecules of water on earth at any given time.  Translated, 4,476,353,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
OR Four -Undecillion, four hundred and seventy six decillion, three hundred and fifty three nonillion, three octillion.  That's a lot of water molecules.