Nearly two thirds of the population think that if inflation is halved, the price of goods will go down

[MereDintofPandiculation]

AIBU to think this means that we need to get a lot better at teaching maths?

Source: Survation poll quoted in Guardian

Alex Chisholm said in an all staff call earlier this year that the CS is doing really well to have a 4.5% pay rise this year because inflation will be that next year, either he doesn't understand inflation or he thinks we are stupid.

I also think that there is a difference between "inflation" and the prices of individual items we buy. Petrol/Diesel is a good example - this time last year we were paying almost £2 a litre of diesel. It's now about £1.40. So prices have come down. Likewise, other items have risen by more than the base inflation rate, some staple foods.

People don't get that either and tbh probably aren't that interested - they just see their bills going up.

Which supports my comment that we need to get better at teaching maths, so people do understand

I think it depends on how the question was asked.

I think most people would interpret the question in the same way as you if it were posed in more mathematical terms eg:

If inflation next quarter is half the inflation this quarter, does that mean that prices have dropped, prices have stayed the same, prices, have increased but by a smaller percentage than they did last quarter, prices have increased by the same amount as last quarter, or prices have increased by a greater percentage than last quarter?

The way you have asked it is open to interpretation because of the word will not have.

People may be interpreting it as what do you think will happen in the medium or long term ie if inflation halves now, will prices drop in relative terms in the future eg by next year, will you be spending a smaller percentage of your income on food. They are thinking of it as a question about economic predictions rather than what it means literally/mathmatically at that point in time.

I can't remember learning about inflation in maths, but remember vividly learning it in history lessons!

though I don't know anyone expecting price to deceases most just want price increases to slow or ideally stagnate.

In threads about strikes, some posters genuinely say "will you accept a pay cut when inflation falls?"

But if inflation slows, prices stop going up right? No! They still go up, but not as fast as they were.

For prices to stay the same, the rate of inflation would have drop to zero.

Anyway, the fact that people don't know this is because they weren't taught it. Well, I wasn't or if I was I don't remember! It doesn't mean the public is stupid of incapable of understanding, just that it's something some people don't understand until it is explained Which is why we need to teach maths better.

Sorry but this is just common sense. People just don't seem to be able to think properly. They are told something and they believe it without just pondering it and trying to understand. We now have more information at our finger tips than ever before but people's understanding and ability to question seems to have gone out of the window. A lot of it is just laziness.

I think its poor reasoning that people use rather than poor maths. I love the "the economy grew at 0.4% with inflation at 8.6%". Um, no the economy (production of goods) shrank at 8.2%, only prices grew.

The question was specific - if inflation last year was 10% and bread now costs £1 how much will it cost next year if inflation is 5%

A lot of people said less than £1

I wonder if it's a mixup between inflation which drives interest rates ( when interest rates fall you pay less in your mortgage)

Which would imply it's comprehension and applied maths not simple maths that needs to be taught

‘Well I will admit to being clueless. But if inflation slows, prices stop going up right? ‘

Wrong. If the rate of increase is slower it just means it’s not going up as fast, not stopping. For example if I drove my car and started off at 60mph then slowed down to 30mph, have I stopped driving? No. I’m still moving forward. Same as with a slow down in inflation.

Isn't this the same thing?

Sorry if that is a stoopid question. I used to be quite good at maths but am clearly quite out of touch because a lot of posters are using phrases on this thread that are

"Inflation is the gradient of price" 🤷

I don't doubt it I just don't know them.

I have recently heard more presenters explaining that decreases in say food inflation just mean that that the rate of price increase is slowed down - so perhaps there more awareness creeping in - or maybe they get people writing in complaining that price of food is still increasing so now feel need to clarify.

@TonysGaff There were two polls giving similar results.

one asked

The government has a target to "halve inflation" by the end of this year. If
achieved, this will mean that next year goods and services in general will cost:
More than they do now
The same as they do now
Less than they do now
Don’t know

The second asked

Imagine that in May 2023 the annual rate of inflation was 10% for bread and so the price of a loaf of bread has risen and now costs £1. Looking forward, if the annual rate of inflation on bread is 5% (half of what it was)
in May 2024, how much will a loaf of bread cost then?

and gave a range of prices from less than 85p to more than £1.15.

If BBC reporters aren't understanding this then that's very embarrassing and unacceptable.

I'm not surprised that many people don't understand this or thought about things long enough to realise that they are wrong.

It's the rate of increase ( typically over a year) which is the same as the %increase over that year

( Am now doubting myself !)

It's the same as the energy price cap, people couldn't seem to understand that this was not what they would pay and acted as though their bills would be 4k when they'd only paid £1.5k previously

It was a misunderstanding way back in the seventies when inflation was at or greater than 20% and fell back to around 10%.

Mum was a teacher and would come home infuriated with colleagues saying that inflation was down but milk still cost more than it did 6 months ago. Some of the staff concerned were non teachers but at least one was a graduate.

Yes that’s right. So if the percentage increase over a year drops from 10% last year to 5% this year, prices go up 5% this year, which is only half the amount they rose last year. But because inflation has dropped from 10% to 5%, a worrying number of people appear to think that prices should actually drop.

Is this correct for an old crone who was brutal at maths at school and ever since!

Last year I bought something for 100 inflation rate was zero.
Replaced six months ago with inflation rate of 10%, now costs 110
Need a new one next month - inflation rate 5% - the cost will increase by 5% on six months ago. It will now cost 115.50.

The price will NOT reduce by 5%.

Please do not laugh at me, but correct me gently if required.

I think that's right. It needs to be a minus number for price to go down

generally correct. The price definitely won't go down. However, if the inflation rates are annual rates then in the intervening period you would only see a portion of the annualized 5% increase, i.e in the 6 month period if inflation annualized was 5% you would see approximately 2.5% price increase.

I'm not surprised. I did a bit of economics in General Studies A-Level when this sort of thing was covered. Had I not done this then I'd certainly have got well into adulthood without understanding inflation. The government doesn't really have an interest in people knowing how things work either.

Maths comprehension in the UK is generally abysmal. This is the result of that.

We've made it acceptable to be numerically illiterate. Rishi absolutely had a point about continuing maths education to age 18, but look how many people reacted with, 'Why do we need all this rubbish - you'll never use it 'in the real world'!' with no understanding at all of a) how they do, in fact, use it 'in the real world' and b) how much less able to control their own lives they are without the knowledge that understanding grants.

Even simple arithmetic skills are poor. There is a reason we insist kids learn to do this in their heads. Yes, most people now do have a calculator on them all the time - so what? That shouldn't make ignorance a target and, in any case, the value of learning multiplication tables and adding and subtracting isn't just in being able to complete those functions in your head. It's training the brain to recognise and accommodate numbers quickly and effectively, laying a foundation.

The same thing happens in English, too, past a certain point. There's no understanding that the GCSE syllabus is intended to teach students to read, analyse, critique, compare and contrast, recognise (and use) persuasive language, recognise unreliable narrators and biased writers and inaccurate sources.... and even less of why those skills are important.

And, it's all compounded by embarrassment-driven reverse snobbery - 'why? I've never needed all that rubbish after school!' to mask the fact that they can't do it so its easier to pretend it doesn't matter, passing on the attitude and their ignorance to the next generation.

On it's own, inflation is not that hard a concept to teach. Just get some balloons! You'll snarl on a lot of people translating into real terms, though, because they can't manage percentages, much less compound ones.

Yes, but you don't need to know about the gradients of functions etc to understand that inflation is a measure of how fast something is increasing rather than a measure of an actual increase unless you are studying ecomomics.
Getting into details like that will confuse most people even further.