In the Economist a few weeks ago there was a review of a book about different nation’s notions about adultery.   According to the book the country with the highest percentage of males committing adultery is Togo (37%) and the two countries with the least adulterous males are Australia (2.5%) and Switzerland (3%).

In the study, the percentage of men are those who are married and who have cheated on their spouse in the last 12 months.   It was determined through extensive surveying and might be flawed.   

The numbers seem scary.   Take Australia, the "best" nation with only 2.5% of men committing adultery in the last 12 months.   Is it me, or does 2.5% seem alarming?   Imagine, in the very best place for fidelity in world, 1 in 40 men still cheat every year!  Really unbelievable.   I would hope it would be more like 1 in 200.   am I just naive?   

I was at a dinner party not too long ago and one of the other attendees did something very interesting … he chastised one of the guests for not really knowing Shakespeare.   Then, a few minutes later, this same chastiser was bragging about how little he cared for math and science — he said other people could focus on that.

Is Shakespeare really more important than math and science?
Maybe.

Too often people think what they know is REALLY important and what their ignorant of is something easily done by others.

As the dinner progressed, I asked a question to the other nine guests: you roll 5 dice, what is the probability of getting at least one four.   Turns out, no one knew.   Now granted, it is actually a hard question for someone that hasn’t studied probability … the smattering of Stanford B-school and Harvard Law School grads hadn’t studied math and statistics in college like I had.   And one can get through life fine without knowing simple probability … just like many get through life without knowing Shakespeare.   

Whether it is the Monty Hall problem or the Birthday problem, people have a real lack of understand of their chance of something.   Maybe that explains gambling.   Or playing credit card roulette.   it seems math and science is quite important for any learned person to master.

Now I don’t know much about Shakespeare … but it isn’t something I brag about.   In fact, I see that as one of my deficiencies that I’m not proud of.   So I get taken aback when people feel that what they know is so much more important than what they don’t know.