Where do the difficulties Americans have with quantified elements and timescale come from?

it seems an overproportional number of Americans have troubles developing a concrete understanding what an adequate timeline for the consideration of a given phenomenon is - whether it is about history, physics, etc.
Similarly an overproportional number have troubles understanding scales, quantities, averages, etc.

Is life in the US less informed by objective numbers and more by subjective perceptions (much, little, few, etc.) ?

2013-03-15T14:27:34Z

As a rule of thumb I prefer indicating a quantity in a given unit rather than providing my perception of the numerical element.

2013-03-16T01:19:42Z

I was wondering whether the multiple units in the imperial system make it harder to see a continuity between different scales and relate one thing to another. Canadian do not seem so affected by this problem although they partly share the same culture. Any thoughts?

2013-03-16T01:22:32Z

Maybe the uneducated people in the US (as opposed to other place) do not perceive their lack of education that much? or do not see it as a problem? (in my place, uneducated people tend to know that they are uneducated).

Anthony2013-03-15T17:09:18Z

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I'm not sure if it's only the United States that has this problem. Perhaps it's easier to notice our uneducated people because they've become something of a stereotype that everyone is familiar with.

Anyone unable to understand quantities and their relationships probably hates fractions (the most interesting and important part of mathematics). Everything can be described or at least approximated as a fraction, including numbers themselves since they're defined as having a fractional relationship to a base number (10 for example). Ah, where would we be without fractions? The ancients probably had no understanding of numerals or anything symbolic like that, but they likely understood exact quantities (tallied, no doubt) of one thing compared to another or many. So were the beginnings of trigonometry, the rest of geometry, fractions as a lone and abstract idea, and then numerals. From that we have commerce, engineering, and so on.

Anonymous2013-03-15T14:25:20Z

duh...huh? LOL!