If
you grew up in America, you've probably used Arabic numerals pretty much every
day of your life in some way. Same if you're English, French, or from most
other countries. Even in China and Japan, where other numerals are used (零,Yī, 二, Èr, 三, for example), Arabic
numerals are still regularly employed. Unless you're reading this in ancient
Rome, you probably use them too.
Nevertheless,
a survey conducted by poll company Civic Science has found
that 56 percent of Americans would like Arabic numerals (which are the
numbers 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9, used in every number right up until infinity)
banned in schools. America, your prejudice is showing. In the survey, 3,624
people were asked: "Should schools in America teach Arabic Numerals as
part of their curriculum?" to which 2,020 people (56 percent) said
"no", and just 29 percent actually said "yes".
The
survey was designed to show the tribal impulses of people to answer a
question without understanding it first, along their own biased lines.
"Our
goal in this experiment was to tease out prejudice among those who didn't
understand the question," Civic Science's CEO John Dick explained
on Twitter.
"Most
people don't know the origins of our numerical system and yet picked a tribal
answer anyway. You can argue that one is worse than the other but both prove a
similar point."
Fifty-six
percent is a lot of people to both not realize that the numbers we use
are Arabic
numerals and to say they shouldn't be taught in schools.
However,
this bias wasn't unique to people prejudiced against the word
"Arabic". The survey also posed the question "Should
schools in America teach the creation theory of Catholic priest Georges
Lemaître as part of their science curriculum?" to which 53 percent of respondents
said "no".
Which
is a shame because while Georges Lemaître was a
Catholic priest, his "theory of creation" was the theory that the
universe is expanding, which was soon confirmed by Hubble and is now better
known as the Big Bang theory.