I don't think this is all that shocking.
No way. You mean to tell me you weren't
astounded that people who are bad at math are also more likely to default on their mortgage loan payments? Next, you'll be claiming that you weren't alarmed and startled by the follow-up research that shows that the same people are more likely to purchase lottery tickets than the general population.
... there likely is a correlation between bad math skills and socioeconomic status, that can help explain this.
Even if we assume that correlation exists, it wouldn't necessarily "explain" mortgage loan defaults, because the causation could be in the other direction than the one you assume (i.e. it may be that bad math skills
cause low "socioeconomic status" in adulthood, or at least contribute to maintaining it), or it may be that both variables are explained by other factors and have no causal relationship at all.
By the way, the fifth question is actually ambiguous. Here is the text of it:
| Let's say you have $200 in a savings account. The account earns 10 percent interest per year. How much will you have in the account at the end of two years? |
With most actual bank accounts, the answer would be about $244.08 (monthly compounding). Other possible answers include $244.28 (continuous compounding; used by Ally Bank, among others) and $240 (simple interest). The answer they probably intended is $242 (yearly compounding), but there's nothing in the question that tells you that is their intent.
Some of the other questions also require you to make assumptions to answer them, but for those other questions, there's only one reasonable set of assumptions, so I consider the other questions to be satisfactory.