Long time back, I came across this word, in a book called “innumercay” by Jean allen paulos. Like illiteracy, the author argues, ‘innumeracy’ is also a problem which people are not ready to tackle. The ability to relate to numbers and the ability to use them well. A lot of us have in fact, more than innumeracy. We are afraid of numbers.

How should we overcome this? From the childhood, we should allow children to play with numbers. We should make them understand the principles of addition and how it becomes multiplication over a larger set. Similarly, subtraction and how it becomes division over a larger set.

Even in the era of computers and calculators, we should encourage the kids to do it in their mind. We should take pride in the fact that we can do all this mental feat.

That is the way to overcome innumeracy.