The survey in mathematic literacy was carried out in November 2002 with 2,000 people from 15 to 64 years old. This samplecorresponded to more than 110 million Brazilians. The 2nd Inaf showed that 3% of the interviewees are absolute illiterates in mathematics. That is, they do not master simple skills such as reading the price of products or write down a telephone that was dictated to them.
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32% were at level 1 (rudimentary) of mathematical literacy: they did well the tasks of reading numbers up to the order of magnitude of the thousands and numbers with two decimal places frequently used in specific contexts: prices, timetables, simple measuring instruments (clock, tape measure).
44% were at level 2 (basic): they were able to read natural numbers and were able to read and compare decimal numbers referring to prices, counting money and making change. They were also able to do usual operations of addition and subtraction, and even multiplication when not combined with other operations.
21% reached level 3 (full): What distinguished the performance of the respondents classified in level 3 was the ability to elaborate and/or adopt and control a problem solving strategy that required the execution of a series of operations.
The interviewees were submitted to tasks of varied complexity that required skills in reading numbers and other frequently used mathematical representations (charts, tables, scales, etc.) and solving problem situations involving simple arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), proportional reasoning, percentage calculation, time, mass, length and area measurements.