> I'm unconvinced that calculators have made most people a lot worse in arithmetic. There have always been people who are bad at math.

Arithmetic is a subset of maths.

Sure there have always been people bad at math. But basic arithmetic is not really math. We used to drill it into kids but we no longer do so and I can usually see the difference between generations. For example, women in my mother’s generation were not prioritised for education but they often are pretty quick at arithmetic. But kids and young adults I come across pull out their phones for basic additions and divisions. And I find myself pulling out my phone more and more often.

I mean it’s not the end of the world and as you’ve said the raw number of people of numerate people are rising thanks to technology. But technology also seem to rob people of motivation to learn somewhat useful skills and even more so with LLMs.

"it's also possible the average person is _more_ numerate because they can play around with a calculator and quickly build intuition."

This is not actually possible.