# Majority Opposed To Teaching Arabic Numerals **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 14, 2019, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975 "2019-05-14T22:38:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2019, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/61 "2019-05-15T21:40:18Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > The total number of respondents who voted no or no opinion. All of whom must not understand what Arabic numerals are, and therefore, in your own opinion are dangerous at the polls. OK, but you’re making assumptions about what “no opinion” means; some might be objecting to a perceived trick question, others might be confused as to what new teaching is being implied even if they know what Arabic numerals are. Who knows. But [as I clarified later](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21644044&postcount=51), the interesting and most pertinent thing is the “no” answers. The “no” answers in my view actually have political implications, because they’re essentially saying, “I don’t know what this is, but I just don’t like the sound of it, so I’m agin’ it”. This is consistent with the fact that Republicans overwhelmingly favored that choice compared to either of the other groups. How much of it is bigotry and how much is rejection of a perceived new unknown I don’t know, but they (and quite a few independents) are happy to make a decision based on ignorance and zero evidence. This does have voting implications. I think it helps explain why the Oval Office is currently occupied by an orange marmoset. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2019, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/62 "2019-05-15T22:33:33Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > OK, but you’re making assumptions about what “no opinion” means; some might be objecting to a perceived trick question, others might be confused as to what new teaching is being implied even if they know what Arabic numerals are. There’s good reasons for not taking any of the responses to this poll at face value, but I don’t think its fair to take one set of numbers at face value, and start throwing out suppositions for what the responders “really” meant for the other sets. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2019, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/63 "2019-05-15T23:20:13Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > There’s good reasons for not taking any of the responses to this poll at face value, but I don’t think its fair to take one set of numbers at face value, and start throwing out suppositions for what the responders “really” meant for the other sets. I suppose I’m swayed by having seen the results of so many ballot initiatives where morons vote against their own interests because of well-financed propaganda campaigns, and then get all upset when their public school systems or highway systems go to shit. Or, of course, the ascension of the aforementioned orange marmoset. But the epidemic of ignorant voters who don’t understand the issues is particularly apparent in direct voting on policies, as in ballot initiatives, who then stare in slack-jawed surprise at the unintended consequences. You’re right that we don’t know the reasons behind selecting “no opinion” on the poll, and we don’t know the reasons for selecting “no”, either. But given that it was a very stupid question to which even an elementary school student should have known that the answer was “yes”, or just “this is stupid”, the fact that so many seemed to confidently answer “no” – a group heavily dominated by Republicans – seems to me to suggest a pattern of uninformed decision-making among voters. Recall that a great many Republicans were highly opposed to Obamacare when it was being formulated, but were quite in favor of the Affordable Care Act when it was described to them. I believe one of the major differences was that Obamacare was the one with the Death Panels™. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kimera757](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimera757/32/3765_2.png) [@Kimera757](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimera757)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/64 "2019-05-15T23:26:39Z")
> [@Bootis](#): > > I don’t remember I ever being taught in school that our numbers are specifically called Arabic numbers, certainly not in a way that stressed that terminology in the way “Roman numerals” were This. I learned by reading history books on my own time. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2019, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/65 "2019-05-15T23:52:33Z")
I’ve known about the Arabic number system referring to our common positional base-10 system since I was a small child, so I suppose I must have learned it in school, but I don’t know for sure. It’s possible that the terminology may be more obscure than I thought, but there is absolutely nothing that can justify a response of “no” from someone who doesn’t even know what it means! Nor can I shake the idea that so many “no” responses, especially from Republicans, is disturbing. Suppose for a moment that this wasn’t just a poll, but a ballot initiative. And suppose that the question wasn’t this stupid one, but about some hypothetical “Arabic math” that educators had found to be a very effective teaching aid for helping students understand basic concepts in, say, number theory and geometry. How would you feel as a parent in a Republican district where Republican loons had voted “no” because … well, whatever their irrational motivations were, despite knowing nothing about what it meant. Thus depriving your child of a better education, because it had the word “Arab” in it, or maybe just because the voters didn’t understand what it was, but voted it down anyway. This is what I think the “no” polling is symptomatic of. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/66 "2019-05-16T00:43:41Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > I just got a robocall a day or two ago with a “one question poll”. The question was “Do you favor [some state issue]? Press 1 for, yes press 2 for no.” There was no “I don’t know” or “No opinion” option. Honest pollsters, I mean. Was your question loaded? I used to be on the Republican mailing list, and I’d get polls all the time like “Do you support Obama selling our country out to the Godless atheists: Yes or No.” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/67 "2019-05-16T00:51:22Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > So that’s 71% of the people at a minimum, according to this poll, who are spectacularly uninformed. Guess we should consider revoking the right to vote from these people based on this one bit of trivia knowledge, since their voting is so worrying. Awesome! I never said that everyone who voted no was biased. You’d need a baseline where the question did not involve a loaded group to see who would vote no on anything. However, why do you think the poll was done? I really don’t think that the teaching of standard numerals is a hot button issue. Bias is. And we know that you need to be a bit subtle to detect bias. Even people who hate Arabs aren’t going to tell a pollster that, in general. This is the same kind of reason they do those tests measuring reaction time to good and bad things when they are shown in conjunction with black people and white people. It is a measure of implicit bias. And a pretty clever one, I think. I’d have to see the paper to see if they did do a baseline - that wouldn’t make it into a newspaper story, probably. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/68 "2019-05-16T00:52:35Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m not sure what it is about that part of my post that you “greatly doubt.” That the reason for the poll was a gotcha. See my previous post for what I think the real reason was. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/69 "2019-05-16T01:02:08Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > That the reason for the poll was a gotcha. See my previous post for what I think the real reason was. Your post describing what you think was the real reason for the question does not appear to differ substantially from mine. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/70 "2019-05-16T09:33:33Z")
I wonder what their opinion is on teaching the Latin alphabet. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/71 "2019-05-16T10:24:58Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > Just curious, how many of you are aware that in some Arabic countries, they do use a different set of Arabic numerals. > > [Eastern Arabic numerals - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Arabic_numerals) > > A while back, I saw an Egyptian market trader using Eastern Arabic numerals on a scratchpad, so I can confirm (well, one data point) that they’re actually in use. And just to confuse matters further – in a generally well-informed source, which I respect: I’ve seen the Eastern Arabic numerals, as above, referred to as “Semitic numerals” – as distinct from [Western] Arabic numerals, our standard system. There was in the reference, an element of “go figure”: but after all, both Jews and Arabs are Semitic peoples. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/72 "2019-05-16T12:58:22Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > OK, but you’re making assumptions about what “no opinion” means; some might be objecting to a perceived trick question, others might be confused as to what new teaching is being implied even if they know what Arabic numerals are. Who knows. Well, fine. Which people are the “spectacularly uninformed” people whom who you worry “having the right to vote”? How did they vote? > [@](#): > > But [as I clarified later](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21644044&postcount=51), the interesting and most pertinent thing is the “no” answers. The “no” answers in my view actually have political implications, because they’re essentially saying, “I don’t know what this is, but I just don’t like the sound of it, so I’m agin’ it”. Well, I’m confused. Just above you literally said we have no way of knowing why the “no opinion” people voted “no opinion”. But you absolutely know why the “no” people voted “no”? You suggest that these two possibilities I posed: > [@](#): > > Why not: “people feel that curriculums are already overwhelmed with unnecessary requirements, so voted against adding a subject that they had never heard of until they took this poll.” > > Or: “people have been lead to believe in recent decades that a focus on STEM subject is the most vital part of public education, and so adding an arbitrary foreign language/culture component to already struggling schools seems like a bad idea.” . . . are not reasons why anyone would vote “no”? ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/73 "2019-05-16T13:07:15Z")
I don’t think the Civic’Science’ pollsters asked a loaded question. I mean it’s just plain stupid. I think the pollsters where so stupid to not know what the heck they where talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/74 "2019-05-16T13:19:47Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > However, why do you think the poll was done? I really don’t think that the teaching of standard numerals is a hot button issue. Bias is. And we know that you need to be a bit subtle to detect bias. Even people who hate Arabs aren’t going to tell a pollster that, in general. > This is the same kind of reason they do those tests measuring reaction time to good and bad things when they are shown in conjunction with black people and white people. It is a measure of implicit bias. > And a pretty clever one, I think. I’d have to see the paper to see if they did do a baseline - that wouldn’t make it into a newspaper story, probably. I think the poll was taken to “prove” that people are biased, but I think it fails/was poorly designed, because it assumes without proof that the word “Arabic” in a phrase is the cause of a “no” vote. I think that there’s some slightly more valid inferences to be made from the political breakdown, but still a lot of room for supposition (maybe more Dems vote “Yes” because even though they don’t know what it is they’re anxious about seeming bigoted) and debate. But the OP and the linked article began by stating “Majority Opposed to teaching Arabic Numerals”. I feel like this shift to “well, it’s about how Republicans suck” is an attempt to dodge or redirect attention from the failure of the premise of this thread. Even 60% of Democrats did not vote “Yes”. Bottom line, there are numerous reasonable reasons why a person might vote “No” that don’t involve bias. I’m sure bias plays some part in the difference between Dem and Rep responses, but how much we’re not really able to say. Using the poll as “proof” of some underlying bias requires too many assumptions about the reasoning behind the responses and the exact nature of the supposed bias that it’s no proof at all. (And, I’ll just add, in case anyone is curious; I’m generally as left as left can get, and don’t usually find myself in debate with the posters I’m engaging in this thread. I just get frustrated when essentially meaningless data gets shoehorned in as a foundation for justifying one’s preexisting assumptions about other people’s motivation. I don’t argue about it on Facebook, but I will do so here 🙂 ). ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/75 "2019-05-16T13:21:57Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > If a similar poll shows 90% are in favor of banning the dangerous substance dihydrogen monoxide, it’s the same thing. No it’s not. The vast majority of us were taught that the numbers we use are Arabic. Unless as a joke, I’m guessing a almost no one was taught that dihydrogen monoxide is another name for water. The poll illustrates how a lack of literacy can lead to misplaced fears. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/76 "2019-05-16T13:40:34Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > No it’s not. The vast majority of us were taught that the numbers we use are Arabic. Unless as a joke, I’m guessing a almost no one was taught that dihydrogen monoxide is another name for water. > > The poll illustrates how a lack of literacy can lead to misplaced fears. I’m actually not entirely sure we ever were taught the number system we use is Arabic. It’s certainly something I picked up along the way, but I couldn’t state with any degree of confidence that we were explicitly taught this in school. And if we were taught, it was a one-off and rarely referred to again, as I simply cannot remember ever using the phrase in school. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/77 "2019-05-16T15:04:36Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > No it’s not. The vast majority of us were taught that the numbers we use are Arabic. Cite? I just don’t know that that’s true, and I don’t know that an informal collection of “well, I know I was” data points from self-styled smarty pants members of a smarty pants message board is going to give you an accurate understanding of what the “vast majority of us” were or were not taught. And how many things that a teacher or book might or might not have mentioned one time in one class somewhere (which I guess qualifies as a thing “having been taught”) that is never used or revisited again do we expect “the vast majority” of people to retain and be able to recall decades later? You know something I learned in 4th grade that for some reason I remember? What the names are for the parts of the shadow that the Earth casts. “The vast majority” (all) of the kids who went through my school were taught this. So, I can only assume that all kids everywhere were taught this, because it’s, like, so fundamental, and plus my experience must be representative of all experiences. Wanna take a bet on how many random “people on the street” would be able to answer the question “what’s an umbra” correctly? I bet the number is vanishingly small. Just as this poll obviously indicates that, despite your and others’ insistence that people “should” know what Arabic numerals are because we were “all taught it”, that most people _don’t_ know they are, and there’s no evidence that we were “all taught it” at any point. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/78 "2019-05-16T16:31:32Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Your post describing what you think was the real reason for the question does not appear to differ substantially from mine. So, you think the poll was to examine implicit bias? I didn’t get that at all from your post, my apologies. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/79 "2019-05-16T16:38:11Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > I don’t think the Civic’Science’ pollsters asked a loaded question. I mean it’s just plain stupid. I think the pollsters where so stupid to not know what the heck they where talking about. In my experience when laypeople say that what something an expert does is stupid, it is because the laypeople don’t understand it. See Senator Proxmire for example. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2019, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975/80 "2019-05-16T16:40:12Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > No it’s not. The vast majority of us were taught that the numbers we use are Arabic. Unless as a joke, I’m guessing a almost no one was taught that dihydrogen monoxide is another name for water. > > The poll illustrates how a lack of literacy can lead to misplaced fears. I got taught that they were called Arabic numerals, but that was decades ago. I know it, but then I read a book about the history of zero. I suspect that most people were taught it but forgot it, and I bet the pollsters were expecting that most people did not remember what Arabic numerals were. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/majority-opposed-to-teaching-arabic-numerals/833975.md?page=5)