In a recent article in Newsweek, a mathematics professor bemoaned innumeracy, a widespread disability among otherwise sophisticated Americans. Such innumerate adults, he feels, have only a hazy understanding of numbers and the way they are used. These adults succumb easily to specious arguments that refer to numbers they do not understand. Many have no appreciation of number magnitudes—no grasp of very large numbers and little understanding of small ones (Paulos 1986).