I have excerpted my latest JREF article below. It is about how
an understanding of how randomness works can help us grasp
coincidence and how it can do away with seemingly “miraculous”
events like having a “predictive” dream. If you are interested,
you can find all my JREF articles here. Many people have a
legitimate fear of numbers, equations, and probability. This
“math anxiety” keeps much of the lay public from ever willfully
learning about mathematics; indeed, ignorance in this regard is
often touted. Commonly used phrases like “I’m not a numbers
person” and “I hate math” betray that fact that a good portion
of society does not understand math and consciously avoids it.
Comprehending this deficit and doing something about it should
be taken up within our school system; we should engage students
with math early, often, and more rigorously. But mathematical
illiteracy plays a role in perpetuating not just equation
ignorance, but pseudoscience. Not understanding just how much of
your life is governed by rand