On NPR’s Fresh Air, Dave Davies was interviewing Jill Tartar, the outgoing director of the Center for SETI Research. They were discussing the movie “Contact” based on Carl Sagan’s book when Dave asked if Jill had a favorite scene in the movie. Rather than a favorite scene, Jill had a least favorite scene which had to do with innumeracy.
Innumeracy is to numbers what illiteracy is to writing, right? And Jodie Foster is – it’s just before the first kiss, so she’s out on the balcony behind the control room at Arecibo, and they’re looking at the stars in the beautiful telescope. And she’s doing – ‘oh, look at all those stars. If only one in a million of those stars had planets, and if only one in a million of those planets had life, and if only one in a million of those life forms were transmitting, there would be millions of signals for us to detect’
Well, the math’s all wrong.
There are 10 to the 11- a hundred billion – stars in the Milky Way galaxy. And even if she was looking up and seeing them all – which she wasn’t because your eye only sees a few thousand stars, but let’s say she’s seeing them all. She’s multiplying 10 to the 11 by 10 minus 18, and coming up with 10 to the sixth. That’s wrong by 13 orders of magnitude.
Davies asked what should the script have read
Well, you’d be much closer if you said one in a thousand. And then you would have been OK.
I liked this mixture of science and entertainment. I like the word innumeracy and asked Son if he knew what he meant. He gave an accurate definition and I asked him if he had ever heard the word before. “No.” So how did you know what it meant? “I thought about the root of the word and how it was similar to illiteracy.” Cool.
Then I asked Daughter if she knew what it meant. No idea. I asked DH if he knew what it was. No idea.
Score 1 for Son!