Actually, the book's author, in one of his books describes himself as a "devout agnostic".
More importantly, religious groups (and others) often missuse mathematics either intentionally or through their misunderstanding to cloud issues or to misrepresent facts.
Both of these books are very interesting for that reason. The only caveat I have is that in these two books plus the third one I read (beyond Innumeracy) he uses many of the same examples.
It all boils down to, if you're willing to play with the numbers, you can make anything sound true. My favorite example is one where he has where given the relative rarity of the disease he shows that if you take a test that is accurate 99% of the time (99% of the time is positive when you have the disease and 99% of the time it is negative when you don't have the disease) and a doctor told you you have the disease, how should you feel? The bottom line is after some simple mathematics, it turns out that the chance of you actually having the disease is something like 9%.
As to why an agnostic would speak in mathematical terms, everything is in no way mathematical. The trouble comes when people don't understand mathematics (or more correctly how to apply it).
In any case, I find the books very interesting. It gives you an interesting perspective on how numbers can be misrepresented depending on the interests of those presenting them.
-Jeff
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'The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history."
-Robert Heinlein
Last edited by jeffsstuff.com : 02-24-2007 at 11:40 PM.
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