Following the Prime Minister’s address last night, Twitter was ablaze with mockery of the equation the government will use to determine our route out of lockdown.
In particular, people were keen to show their mastery of primary school-level maths, by observing that ‘if the number of infections is 183,000 and R is 0.7, our threat level is 183,000.7 – how does changing R change the threat level?’ Others were quick to point out that: ‘R is a ratio and the number of infections is an integer so it’s meaningless to add them.’
However, at some point during their GCSEs they must have nodded off, because they would otherwise have encountered complex numbers, which show that it is perfectly possible for the government’s formula to work mathematically.
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