Training Numeracy

Abstract

This chapter, “Training Numeracy,” focuses on improving numeric competencies to provide backdoor assistance to adults who want to make better decisions. The chapter reviews research on the roles of formal schooling in childhood and numeracy training in adulthood. It particularly highlights current evidence on adult trainings for objective numeracy and subjective numeracy and their causal effects in decision making. Although more intervention research is needed (especially to increase effect sizes), it is simply not the case that people cannot change their numeric ability. Instead, emerging interventions can build adult numeric capacity and propel decision makers to bring knowledge to bear on decisions, think probabilistically, use heuristic processing less, consider alternative scenarios, and reason better numerically. Finally, the chapter introduces the question of how much numeracy improvement is necessary to drive better decisions and outcomes if objective numeracy has cumulative effects across time.