Camelot, the UK’s National Lottery operator, have decided to withdraw their “Cool Cash” scratchcard because it appears that a proportion of the UK’s population don’t understand the concept of “minus numbers”.

The theory being — and it’s not a particularly advanced mathematical theory is that a number such as -4 is lower than 3. That -2 is lower than 0, and that -6 is lower than -4. You get the idea?

Well, apparently not everyone does…

On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn’t. I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher, not lower, than -8, but I’m not having it.Tina F, quoted on El Reg

Now while it may sound like it, I’m not poking fun at someone with poor numeracy skills. There are a significant proportion of adults with poor numeracy or literacy and it’d be better for them, the economy and therefore pretty much everyone if they could improve their literacy and numeracy skills. I’d therefore like to make it plain that I don’t think people should feel ashamed of poor literacy or numeracy but should instead seek to take advantage of the many courses on offer to address these things.

What I am poking fun at is someone who obviously is aware she has poor numeracy skills — she admits not having passed any form of Maths GCSE — then and yet shows such a lack of self-awareness that she insists her numeracy skills are still better than that of the Camelot (who have been running the UK’s national lottery for about 15 years or so) to the extent that she gets all self-righteous and seems to think they’re cheating her.

Well, Tina, they aren’t. Okay?