This TED Talk features data visualization editor Alan Smith, recorded live at TEDx Exeter 2016.

Back in 2003, the UK government carried out a survey.

And it was a survey that measured levels of numeracy in the population,

and they were shocked to find out that for every 100 working age adults in the country,

47 of them lacked level one numeracy skills.

Now, level one numeracy skills, that's low-end GCSE score. It's the ability to deal with fractions, percentages, and decimals. So this figure

prompted a lot of hand-wringing in Whitehall. Policies were changed. Investments were made,

and then they ran the survey again in 2011.

So can you guess what happened to this number?

It went up to 49.

And in fact, when I reported this figure in the FT,

one of our readers joked and said,

this figure is only shocking to 51% of the population.

Well, I preferred, actually, the reaction of a school child who said to me, when I presented

at a school this information, said, raised the hand and said, how do we know that the person

who made that number isn't one of the 49% either? So, clearly there's a numeracy issue because these are

important skills for life and a lot of the changes that we want to introduce in this century

involve us becoming more comfortable with numbers. Now, it's not just an English problem.

OECD this year released some figures looking at numeracy in young people,

and leading the way the USA nearly 40% of young people in the US have low numeracy.

Now, England is there too, but so there's seven countries,

seven OECD countries with figures above 20%.

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