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Maths in the news: uses and errors in Portuguese newspapers

Abstract

The authors present a quantitative content analysis to assess the use ofmathematical information in the news of five generalist Portuguesenewspapers during a three-month period. Misuses of mathematics werealso studied in this context. Results show that only a small percentage ofthe news articles have mathematical information when compared toprevious studies in the field. Furthermore, over 30% of the news articlescontaining mathematical information have some type of mathematicalerror. Different categories of errors are defined and reasons why thesemight occur are discussed

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