Abstract: Steen (1999) stated that ‘quantitative literacy – or numeracy, as it known in British English – means different things to different people’. He then proposed that quantitative literacy is both more than and different from mathematics – at least as mathematics has traditionally been viewed by school and society.

Yet quantitative literacy by any definition must include the abilities to read and write mathematics (Whitin and Whitin, 2000). Perhaps the debate should focus on the level of mathematics. Would an adult who can understand a chart published in the financial section of a newspaper but is unable to comprehend a written proof for the infinitude of primes be considered literate in the quantitative sense? There would be an unequivocal answer if the adult in question were a mathematics major. However, anecdotal knowledge suggests that undergraduate students generally do not and often cannot read mathematics textbooks and journals. When I once asked a writer of calculus textbooks for undergraduates if his students read his books, he replied, “At most only small portions and…the worked examples.”