What happened when MPs took a maths exam

Could it be that Labour leader Ed Miliband's demand that all school pupils must study maths until they are 18 has been prompted by new evidence that his own MPs struggle with numbers?

The man in charge of the party's policy review, Jon Cruddas, admitted this weekend that he is "barely numerate". And when the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) recently tested the ability of honourable members to answer a relatively simple mathematical question, only a quarter of Labour MPs got it right.

A total of 97 MPs were asked this probability problem: if you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?*

Among Conservative members, 47% gave the wrong answer, which is disappointing enough. But of the 44 Labour MPs who took part, 77% answered incorrectly.

(*The correct response, of course, is 25%.)

The survey also asked MPs if they generally felt confident when dealing with numbers -

• 76% of Tories said they did
• 72% of Labour MPs surveyed expressed confidence

However, when asked if they thought politicians use official statistics and figures accurately when talking about their policies, only 17% of Conservative respondents agreed, as did 30% of the Labour members who took part.

I wish I had been a fly-on-the-wall when the Ipsos Mori pollsters conducted the survey. The maths question was put to 41 Conservative MPs, 44 Labour MPs, nine LibDems and three from other parties in face-to-face interviews.

Given the confidence in their numeracy expressed at the beginning of the survey, I wonder how the 60% of members who got the answer to the probability question wrong felt by the end.

The research was commissioned by the Getstats committee at the RSS (of which I am a member), part of a 10-year long campaign to improve the way Britain handles numbers.

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I said, damn. Never misunderestimate the stupidity of politicians, I suppose.

Maybe they were "thinking" very deeply into the coin flip. While a coin flip is supposed to be 50/50 there are many variables that decide the outcome.  I would like to know who voted for 75% though.

"If the coin spins when it lands, the odds shift some more. Depending on the coin’s design, even a slight weight advantage on one side may increase the odds of heads or tails."

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/116382

"For example, a coin that is caught with someone's hand has a 51% chance of landing on the same side it was launched."

http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/46110

Although that question is conceptually harder than a lot they could have asked, it's still quite sad. These people are making decisions about the fate of billions of pounds, and probability understanding is essential to estimating risk and return on investment.

my natural response would be 25% of course, but then i started over thinking it. there are only the possible outcomes to flipping 2 coins. getting one head and one tail, getting 2 heads, or getting 2 tails. so in a way it seems its a 1 in 3 chance.

i know its stupid but that seemed kinda interesting to me to think about.

Maybe this is why people decide that who they want to have a beer with needs to be a major factor in who to elect to office, because it seems suckage happens in other areas.  Image of the Romney campaign and Venn diagrams is popping in my head now.

Oh dear, British Politicians aren't the brightest, they don't know how to fix any real problem, and being incorrect in these questions certainly doesn't help them either.

I like your thought, but you have to remember that getting 2 heads or 2 tails do not carry the same probability of getting 1H and 1T. If 2H, 2T, and 1H+1T all had the same probability of occuring, you would be correct.

However since 1H+1T has a 1/2 chance of occuring, and 2H and 2T have the same probability of occuring, 2H and 2T must equal 1/4.

1/4 + 1/4 + 1/2 = 1

Nah our MP's are just idiots, David Cameron especially! He doesn't even know basic parts of basic British history and politics despite going to Eton! 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9571852/David-Camerons-ignorance-over-Magna-Carta-and-Rule-Britannia-exposed.html

While Michael Gove said GCSE's were too easy but can't answer them! And is purposing o levels (again!)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNR0AuGnoUg&feature=related

Some politicians are just idiots aren't they, even if they had a private education!

I don't know.  I feel like Mitt Romney is actually pretty good at Math.

Mitt may be good at math, but those who are with his campaign, apparently don't understand how Venn diagrams work:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/02/mitt-romney-does-not-know-how-venn-diagrams-work/

....