I recently read the book Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. It’s a fairly short book about how mathematical illiteracy is so dangerous, although if you have been paying attention to the beliefs of the public and many of our elected officials during the recent budget crises at the state and federal level, it’s pretty obvious how common it is to have no sense of the realities of numbers. Still, it was a pretty decent book.
One area where it comes up short, however, is in terms of solutions. I can’t really fault him for this, because there is no easy solution. A drastic change in our math curriculum, focusing on real-world applications of mathematical concepts, would probably go a long way to help the problem (it does seem that most American adults struggle with fractions and percentages). Other than that, though, this isn’t the kind of issue that is amenable to instant fixes. If you do want some anecdotes about innumeracy, though, and you feel that you can handle the kind of dismay that books like these will generate, then give it a try.