I'm not sure we're all arguing about the same question. I have no doubt that if you want to instantly be able to multiply two numbers from 1 to 12, rote learning of tables will do the trick.

But I think the time could be better spent. For example, just recently I've seen two newspapers make the same mistake - in the one case, a couple had just had their third child, and all three children had been born on the same date, the chances of which, according to the newspaper, were "an astonishing 48 million to 1".

It would be astonishing if it were true, but the right answer is about 133 thousand to 1.

A trivial mistake - but what when the person making this mistake is a juror in a trial and presented with an equally spurious "probability" of the person in the dock being guilty of the death of their second child cot death, or where evidence is based largely on a probability of DNA matching? It's a bit more important then that people should be confident in handling probabilities. But so few are!