What’s 5% of £9? You can use a calculator (answer at the end of article)
Did your anxiety just spike? In her evidence to the House of Lords’ Numeracy for Life Committee, Professor Hannah Fry (of Traitors fame) said she thinks “genuine maths trauma” from school stops some adults from engaging with the subject “in any way whatsoever”. That even applies to “practical numeracy skills”. The Numeracy for Life report highlights how health, money and job prospects can all be impacted by maths stress. So, how might this be impacting you and what can you do to change it?
Let’s start with health. The Royal Statistical Society says that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, not understanding statistics increased vulnerability to misinformation. The Numeracy report also highlights misunderstanding of numbers in cancer treatment and diabetes as areas for concern. Professor Ioannis Kontoyiannis from the University of Cambridge told City News that he thinks statistics are tricky because our intuition about them is “usually wrong”. To understand stats, he says takes “time and skill”. But according to a 2025 survey of 580 Year 7 Maths lessons by the Observatory for Mathematical Education, only five in every hundred lessons was on statistics. That is much lower than the number focusing on algebra (24) or geometry (17).
So, if statistics are the key skill for improving your health, what is the number one thing to know to improve your bank balance? Prof. Kontoyiannis says one of the most important things is the difference between “how the markets operate and how the average person, if such a thing exists, thinks about money and banking”. He explains that a lot of trading is now done using algorithms, rather than by humans, so if you don’t understand the way the markets operate, it “creates a big difficulty”.
The bad news is that, according to Prof. Fry, all of this is likely to be impacting what jobs you choose to apply for. In her evidence to the report, she said that one in four people “would be deterred from applying for a job if it stated in the advert that numbers were a requirement”. So if you’re keen to improve your confidence using numbers, Prof. Kontoyiannis suggests focusing on statistics, percentages, averages and causality, which he says is “wildly misunderstood”.
What could improve this? The Numeracy Committee recommends “investment in the recruitment of specialist maths teachers”. For Prof. Kontoyiannis, the solution is even simpler: “you triple the salaries of teachers and education becomes immediately much, much better”.
…and the answer was 45p. If you got it right, congrats! National Numeracy found that half of adults struggled to answer it.
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HeadlineAre you paying the price for ‘maths trauma’ at school?
Short HeadlineAre you paying the price for 'maths trauma'?
StandfirstHouse of Lords' report highlights how maths anxiety could be impacting your health, wallet and job prospects.
What’s 5% of £9? You can use a calculator (answer at the end of article)
Did your anxiety just spike? In her evidence to the House of Lords’ Numeracy for Life Committee, Professor Hannah Fry (of Traitors fame) said she thinks “genuine maths trauma” from school stops some adults from engaging with the subject “in any way whatsoever”. That even applies to “practical numeracy skills”. The Numeracy for Life report highlights how health, money and job prospects can all be impacted by maths stress. So, how might this be impacting you and what can you do to change it?
Let’s start with health. The Royal Statistical Society says that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, not understanding statistics increased vulnerability to misinformation. The Numeracy report also highlights misunderstanding of numbers in cancer treatment and diabetes as areas for concern. Professor Ioannis Kontoyiannis from the University of Cambridge told City News that he thinks statistics are tricky because our intuition about them is “usually wrong”. To understand stats, he says takes “time and skill”. But according to a 2025 survey of 580 Year 7 Maths lessons by the Observatory for Mathematical Education, only five in every hundred lessons was on statistics. That is much lower than the number focusing on algebra (24) or geometry (17).
So, if statistics are the key skill for improving your health, what is the number one thing to know to improve your bank balance? Prof. Kontoyiannis says one of the most important things is the difference between “how the markets operate and how the average person, if such a thing exists, thinks about money and banking”. He explains that a lot of trading is now done using algorithms, rather than by humans, so if you don’t understand the way the markets operate, it “creates a big difficulty”.
The bad news is that, according to Prof. Fry, all of this is likely to be impacting what jobs you choose to apply for. In her evidence to the report, she said that one in four people “would be deterred from applying for a job if it stated in the advert that numbers were a requirement”. So if you’re keen to improve your confidence using numbers, Prof. Kontoyiannis suggests focusing on statistics, percentages, averages and causality, which he says is “wildly misunderstood”.
What could improve this? The Numeracy Committee recommends “investment in the recruitment of specialist maths teachers”. For Prof. Kontoyiannis, the solution is even simpler: “you triple the salaries of teachers and education becomes immediately much, much better”.
…and the answer was 45p. If you got it right, congrats! National Numeracy found that half of adults struggled to answer it.
