People are math challenged
Tonight I had dinner at McDonald's. I ordered five items off the dollar menu. Even before the girl had finished entering all the items, I had $5.35 on the counter. When she was done, she was shocked that the total was $5.35, and asked if I ordered that all the time. I said, "No - five dollar menu items plus 7% tax is simple."
She looked at me like that sort of rocket science was beyond her capabilities.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the next generation of gamblers...the kind that will think that double zero roulette is better because it has one more way to win, and that 6:5 is more than 3:2.
Sigh....
Thanks for letting me rant.
Quote: DJTeddyBear
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the next generation of gamblers.
I feel your pain, but haven't people been lamenting what becomes of the world when the "next ganeration" comes of age, since time immemorial?
Actually (other than single zero roulette) there is not a better bet in the casino that will turn $1 into $36 than the good old 00 roulette table.
So many people are growing up as well without basic logic skills. They brainlessly punch numbers into a cash register or computer without thinking about the meaning of the results. It's fine to use a cash register to add a bunch of numbers or to calculate tax, but you really shouldn't be relying on the register to tell you how much change you owe the customer.
One thing though that I do notice about today's generation however is their ability to type. My daughter is in 7th grade and although she hasn't taken a formal typing or keyboarding class she can type very fast and fairly well (though spelling is another issue altogether).
unfortunately they couldn't teach me how to use the caps key. but what the heck, i'm too old to learn old tricks.
Although with things as simple as you're talking about, I agree they should be basic logic.
I double checked your math. You are right! 7 percent tax means 7 cents for every 100, so for each of those dollar items it 7 cents. Since there are five items, it becomes 5 times 7 or 35 cents!! Now, that was fun. No, really! It was fun. A very pleasant way for me to have spent the fifteen minutes figuring this out. Thanks.Quote: DJTeddyBearI had $5.35 on the counter. she was shocked that the total was $5.35, and asked if I ordered that all the time. I said, "No - five dollar menu items plus 7% tax is simple."
Quote: cclub79I can't tell you how many times my bill has been something like $16.23 and I'll give $21.25 and it's like I've given foreign currency. "It's only 16 dollars sir," as they hand back the single. "But this way you ca-never mind." and then I get 4 one dollar bills. Then you see a sign on the desk "NEED $1s!!!!" Though that's when the register is good..."Just type in what I gave you, and give me the change!"
Ah the memories. Sometimes I end up feeling guilty because my intent to help out the cashier by giving extra change totally confuses them. I remember many years ago I was at a Wendy's when the cash register was not working. There weren't any taxes and my total was something odd like $8.21. I gave the girl $20 and it was like she saw a ghost. She was truly lost and had to ask her coworker who thankfully had elementary math skills. I was going to tell her how much she owed me but something told me she would be insulted.
Quote: boymimboKids who are growing up now learn the basic times tables and learn how to do long division and key algebra but they practice all of the concepts on a calculator so they don't practice the basic math skills.
My daughter is taking 7th grade pre-algebra and the school requires it to be done by hand.
Yeah, I know.Quote: WizardI feel your pain, but haven't people been lamenting what becomes of the world when the "next ganeration" comes of age, since time immemorial?
Actually, I was implying that these are the people that thing double zero is better than wheels with only single zero. It's been mentioned in other threads - just the same way that they think 6:5 is better than 3:2.Quote: scotty81"the kind that will think that double zero roulette is better "
Actually (other than single zero roulette).....
Thanks. I needed that chuckle.Quote: FleaStiffI double checked your math. You are right! 7 percent tax means 7 cents for every 100, so....
But thanks again for letting me rant / vent.
Quote: ahiromuThe wizard has a good point in that this has happened with every generation. I can speak directly in terms of my field, which is literally rocket science: aero/astro engineering. I am currently a student and to be honest what I am doing would take at least twice as long without a computer if not be impossible.
Of course it would be impossible, but I doubt I would find you behind a counter at Wendy's trying to figure out how much a bill is. You would be more of the person trying to figure out how to avoid the cash register altogether by putting RFIDs in the packaging or some other ingenious idea.
Quote: cclub79...and then I get 4 one dollar bills. Then you see a sign on the desk "NEED $1s!!!!
was my favorite.
Quote:
Ah the memories. Sometimes I end up feeling guilty because my intent to help out the cashier by giving extra change totally confuses them. I remember many years ago I was at a Wendy's when the cash register was not working. There weren't any taxes and my total was something odd like $8.21. I gave the girl $20 and it was like she saw a ghost. She was truly lost and had to ask her coworker who thankfully had elementary math skills. I was going to tell her how much she owed me but something told me she would be insulted.
Well, they miss more than math class sometimes. Here is another true fast-food-cashier story. I go into Burger King because I feel like having a Whopper. There is no line so I stroll up. Kid behind the counter asks if I can settle an argument. I say, "sure, why not?"
He asks, "Is Puerto Rico the 51st or 52nd state?"
My reaction is total shock. I think I just told him there are only 50 states and Hawaii was the last acmitted in 1959. Trying to explain "Commonwealth Status" (it isn't a state and it isn't a territory but its also not quite independent, but they do have their own Olympic Team.....) in the time to make a fast food meal would have made his head explode.
Quote: boymimboWith the advent of calculators and computers and the ability to use them as study aids, the magic of basic math eludes most people nowadays. Kids who are growing up now learn the basic times tables and learn how to do long division and key algebra but they practice all of the concepts on a calculator so they don't practice the basic math skills.
So many people are growing up as well without basic logic skills. They brainlessly punch numbers into a cash register or computer without thinking about the meaning of the results. It's fine to use a cash register to add a bunch of numbers or to calculate tax, but you really shouldn't be relying on the register to tell you how much change you owe the customer.
One thing though that I do notice about today's generation however is their ability to type. My daughter is in 7th grade and although she hasn't taken a formal typing or keyboarding class she can type very fast and fairly well (though spelling is another issue altogether).
You have to make a distinction on the cash register thing. WOrking a register is a very monotonous job that turns your mind to mush fast. While you are thinking of one thing, the change, the clerk needs to think to ring up your order, get it right, and do it in less than a minute or so. Over and over. Same thing happens dealing BJ at a Monte Carlo Night. After an hour a person that is totally capable of using algebretic equiations to calculate a bid for varriable costs and a needed margin of profit has to think when he adds a 3, 6 and A.
OTOH, you should be able to tell fairly easily if they are haveing a brain-stop and just slap their head when you tell them the answer or if they have a blank look as though you are speaking Russian.
I think you are right on the typing. I was among the last few years where you took a formal class and people still put ads up later in college to type papers. I still remember the drills---"A-S-D-F-J-K-L-SEM" (Sem=short for semicolon) 25 years later. You had to know how to set up a page on a Selectric II Machine. In computer class there was such a difference between those who knew how and not they made it a prerequisite you took personal typing. Later in the work world I met a girl 10 years younger than me and she said there were no drills, they saw stuff on a screen and typed it in for practice.
I give anyone a pass on spelling but not usage errors. IF not for spell-check I'd never get any job above manual labor.
Well, I thought it was simply amazing that the old ladies who had worked at the store a long time, who I thought were too old to even know how to add and subtract any more, were able to figure out the total so quickly and without using a paper bag, since a lot of the items were priced at 97 cents (there was no sales tax in those days), so I asked one day how they did it.
They explained that you just add up round dollars, then subtract 3 cents for each item, so that four items at 97c would be (4x1)- 12, or 3.88.
Working at that store was also how I learned about giving someone $21 for a purchase of $16 if you didn't have the exact bills, because those same old ladies would ask the customers for the extra dollar sometimes.
Now that I'm the same age as those old ladies, I realize how smart they were :)
Quote: tsmith
They explained that you just add up round dollars, then subtract 3 cents for each item, so that four items at 97c would be (4x1)- 12, or 3.88.
Working at that store was also how I learned about giving someone $21 for a purchase of $16 if you didn't have the exact bills, because those same old ladies would ask the customers for the extra dollar sometimes.Quote:
Some people figure out those kinds of shortcuts and some never seem to do so. For example, when you need to figure out 15% for a restaurant tip I will just divide by 10 and then multiply by 1.5. My dad goes nuts doing it "the long way." He gets more nuts when my brother and I do it over and over with any kind of division or multiplication that is complex enough for paper "the long way." I mean it gets like an episode of "American Choper."
Curiously, both of us just slipped past Algebra II and went no further in math but picked this stuff up later. As a guesstimate I think only 10% or so of adults I meet learn and use such "shortcuts." Maybe Wiz can comment on if teaching them helps or hurts a person's math skills along the way?All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others
Like the old ladies who worked in the store. If they weren't working the cash registers they wouldn't need to know that they could do that "subtract 3 cents" thing because someone else would do it for them. They figured it out because they had to do it all day long, and it made their jobs easier.
My favorite example of people who aren't good at math doing complicated calculations would be my own father. He never made it past the 8th grade but he became a master carpenter and used the "3-4-5 method" to determine if what he was building was square. When I told him he was, in fact, applying the Pythagorean Theorum to his projects, he was amazed that someone like him could be doing such "high math".
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She looked at me and said What are you talking about? Of course then I realized that no one has done that in decades. Which reminds me of the wit who said you used to get your coins in the palm of your hand and then your bills on top. Now people read the change and they hand you the bills, and then give you the coins so that they all fall on the floor. Of course, even that observation is getting dated.
THAT drives me frikin NUTS!Quote: pacomartin...they hand you the bills, and then give you the coins so that they all fall on the floor...
I never realized that there was a 'reason' clerks did it that way.
Quote: pacomartinNow people read the change and they hand you the bills, and then give you the coins so that they all fall on the floor. Of course, even that observation is getting dated.
I hate it when cashiers do that! I often specifically thank them when they give me the coins first, especially if it looks like they are inexperienced, and not set in their ways yet. Coins fit perfectly in the palm of your hand, and as was noted, the alternative is they slip around the paper money, and fall on the floor.
When I was trained as a cashier at Knott's Berry Farm they said to give the coins last, so that the customer to ensure they got the correct change. Perhaps back in 1983 that was a legitimate point, when change was worth something. However, I quickly noticed the problem of the coins falling on the floor, and went against my training and started giving the coins first. Never once did a customer complain about that.
I "game the system" with credit cards, largely out of a resentment of the fact that you are forced to use them for renting cars and making room etc reservations.
Quote: tsmithThey explained that you just add up round dollars, then subtract 3 cents for each item, so that four items at 97c would be (4x1)- 12, or 3.88.
I do something similar when calculating percentages. You start with 10% and 1%, then just add them up to what you need. Example: 16% of 52 is 5.2+(.52*6) This is useful when you don't have either a calculator or paper and pencil handy.
About the next generation, a friend of mine handles tech support at a private school and he also teaches a class there. The stories he tells me about his students are frightening. I'll tell you two of them:
1) A student with a failing average came up to my friend and asked him for help in order to pass the class. In my day that meant the teacher would assign some extra work or maybe offer some extra tutoring during recess or a free period. Well, now it means simply "Hey, teacher, I'm failing and I don't want to fail. Can't you just give me a passing grade?"
2) My friend assigned a paper in the history of computers. This is standard and I remember having done that assignment at least three times in high school and college. One student handed in his assignment boasting "This is A+ material." His "paper" consisted of photocopies of an encyclopedia article with his name scrawled on the margin of the first page. He didn't even bother to copy the article (or in this day and age to cut and paste it onto Word).
Research, analytical, communications, and problem solving skills are what the modern workforce requires today. Learning math is a way to think analytically but if students are not being taught to understand the connection between the math and what they will use it for, they will be bored. Conversely, although writing book reports, essays, and papers may be seen as useless skills, the skill of researching and communication is something that most highly skilled workers need today.
Quote: NandBImagine asking this question... If you see a flash of lightning and hear the thunder 5 seconds later, how far away is it?
I think that's about 5 s times 240 m/s = 1200 ms/s = 1200 m but I may have the speed of sound at sea level wrong.
BTW, it's not just math. Lots of poeple are so ignorant of the mere basics of all science it's hard to believe. Some years back I worked for a cord-blood bank. They had a doctor on staff who taught the sales people the medical part of the pitch. They often had sessions in my work area and I half listened whie I worked. The doc had to explain very basic bodily functions like respiration and heartbeat, things I was taught in elementary school science class. I shudder to think what they thought they knew about cord-blood stem cells.
That would put it around 1 mile every 5 seconds
Getting past that initial hurdle, the explanation of "Speed of Sound" can become complex involving more than simple rule of thumb math. FWIW, the Speed of Sound is Temperature Dependant, but generally considered to be 331.3 m/sec at 0 degrees C, or 1087 ft/sec at 32 degrees F. It takes 4.85 sec/mi and 3.02 sec/km. So 1 mile (1.6 km) is close enough.
The speed of light sufers from some complications, too. The oft cited 300,000 km/s or 186,000 mi/s is the speed of light in a vaccum.
Anwyay, I think most people wouldn't understand this joke:
Did you hear about the phycisist who found the perfect way to cook a chicken? Unfortunately his recipe only works for round chickens in a vaccum.
Quote: NareedThe speed of sound _is_ complex. It depends on the density of the medium sound travels in. So the speed of sound at sea level is not the same as the speed of sound at 10,000 feet, because the air up there is less dense. It is faster in cold air becuase it's denser than warm air. It is faster in water, too, and quite constant because water doesn't compress the way air does. it is even faster in solids (sound is transmitted by solids, too).
The speed of light sufers from some complications, too. The oft cited 300,000 km/s or 186,000 mi/s is the speed of light in a vaccum.
Anwyay, I think most people wouldn't understand this joke:
Did you hear about the phycisist who found the perfect way to cook a chicken? Unfortunately his recipe only works for round chickens in a vaccum.
People also missed the following two:
"186,000 miles per second, its a law we can live with!" A female coworker saw it on my "sign" we were given to put notes or whatever-I used mine =for witty sayings. She says, "how many miles per hour is that?" She missed the point entirely.
"Light travels at the second fastest speed of anything in nature. The fastest is the "speed of dark" because no matter where light travels, dark got there first." Some don't understand it and some are just so "smart" they want to prove me wrong and don't get it is a joke.
Quote: cclub79Since we are talking about money, here's another annoyance for me, mainly because I work in media. You'll hear this on TV and radio all the time. Someone will be talking about how much money a movie made over the weekend, and they will say "It brought in 32.6 million....and Avatar was second at 21.3 million..." Both of those were written with a dollar sign in front on the host's copy, but people don't seem to be able to read it correctly because the symbol is BEFORE the number and text. The correct way to read "$6 million" is Six Million Dollars. But I promise you, you'll hear it read as "6 million" with the dollar omitted more often than not. When I write copy, I ignore the symbol and write the "Dollars" where it belongs, at the end, but many journalists are just looking at AP reports and internet sites that list things with the symbol. Certainly the word dollar is not specifically needed every time you are discussing money, but its absence is more common than it deserves to be.
I think this is a matter of personal preference if you need the "dollars" added or not. To me it is mostly unneeded, just like a Marine is told to say "0600" and never "0600 hours" since you know what 0600 means.
But if you are going to type it out for a infobabe to read you should always write "dollars" after since it is not easy to read and say what you are reading like that. I remember this was some big deal to some people that Sarah Palin had her teleprompter reading "phonetically" as if no one else did that. Turns out many like to read it that way.
They could be dropping the 'dollars' simply to save two sylables. After all, as you pointed out, everybody understands what they are saying.Quote: cclub79The correct way to read "$6 million" is Six Million Dollars. But I promise you, you'll hear it read as "6 million" with the dollar omitted more often than not.
What bothers me about 'dollars' is the habit some people have of putting the dollar sign AFTER the number. In casual writing it's bad enough, but there's a 1$ Mania store near me. I mean, OK, a dollar store isn't going to have any big bucks advertising manager to help fix these sort of things, but still, that's their NAME!
Quote: DJTeddyBearThey could be dropping the 'dollars' simply to save two sylables. After all, as you pointed out, everybody understands what they are saying.Quote: cclub79The correct way to read "$6 million" is Six Million Dollars. But I promise you, you'll hear it read as "6 million" with the dollar omitted more often than not.
What bothers me about 'dollars' is the habit some people have of putting the dollar sign AFTER the number. In casual writing it's bad enough, but there's a 1$ Mania store near me. I mean, OK, a dollar store isn't going to have any big bucks advertising manager to help fix these sort of things, but still, that's their NAME!
I'm not sure, but does putting the "$" after the number signify something? A different currency maybe?
1) Several years ago, I remember hearing a commercial for a jewelry company on the radio. I think it was Nina Jewelers. In the commercial, the announcer claimed that they never made more than 33% profit from anything they sold. The announcer gave an example, which was: if they were selling a $1500 diamond, their profit was $500, or $500/$1500 = 33%. I would argue that this is flawed logic (or, more likely, intentional trickery), because their profit is actually 50%, relative to the price they paid for the item.
2) When I worked at a convenience store, they had an unusual way of determining their markup. They thought that marking a price up by x% was computed by dividing by (1-x). So for a 15% markup, they would divide their cost by 0.85. This is actually a markup of 17.65%, not 15%. I tried explaining this, but of course it did no good.
Quote: AZDuffmanQuote: DJTeddyBearThey could be dropping the 'dollars' simply to save two sylables. After all, as you pointed out, everybody understands what they are saying.Quote: cclub79The correct way to read "$6 million" is Six Million Dollars. But I promise you, you'll hear it read as "6 million" with the dollar omitted more often than not.
What bothers me about 'dollars' is the habit some people have of putting the dollar sign AFTER the number. In casual writing it's bad enough, but there's a 1$ Mania store near me. I mean, OK, a dollar store isn't going to have any big bucks advertising manager to help fix these sort of things, but still, that's their NAME!
I'm not sure, but does putting the "$" after the number signify something? A different currency maybe?
Not exactly, but it's not really optional if you want to read it as it's written. It has more to do with our "only read left to right" mentality. How many people would leave it out if it was written after the number? (24 million dollars) None. So I don't buy that they are just editing themselves. Also, if it said 40c with a cents symbol, you'd always say cents. I will admit people don't do it when their eyes don't have to go FAR back: "$36" is usually read correctly, but if there's a thousand, million, they seem to not go back to the symbol.
Quote: AZDuffman"186,000 miles per second, its a law we can live with!"
I'd heard it as "186,000 miles per second: it's not just a good idea, it's the law."
Regarding the mention or omission of the word "dollars" from news reports on box office results, it's not really relevant. After all, if discussing box office receipts, one can deduce by context the amounts refer to dollars.
What does bug me is when people say "X is the highest grossing movie of all time with $Y billions." Or for that matter any kind of monetary record, be it high prices, record sales, record earnings, etc. None os such reports takes inflation into account. A movie grossing $100 million in the 1950s sold more tickets than one grossing $100 million in the 70s (for example). The website Box Office Mojo has a list of movie earnings adjusted for inflation.
Back in 2006 when gas prices were high, we heard a lot about record gas prices. But how do they compare adjusted for inflation to gas prices in 1979?
Oh, another type of joke people don't get is the Latin joke. Here's one:
Professor Septimus walks into a bar. He orders a dry martinus.
The bartender says "Don't you mean a dry martini, doc?"
"My good man," the professor says, "rest assured had I wanted a double I would have asked for it."
I don't know Latin, nor did I ever take an etymology course in school. But I've picked up some of the basics of Latin and Greek (having a Romance native language does help) as regards structure and the root meaning of the more common words. This is harder for English speakers beacsue English, though heavily influenced by Latin, is a Germanic language.
I gave my notice, and before the day was out I'd had 3 calls from people who heard it through the grapevine. I got hired somewhere else at 18%, which I negotiated myself. Less volume, but higher rate, meant same pay for less work, which is always good.
Quote: NareedThe speed of sound _is_ complex.
I thought it was a positive real number. Of course, you could argue that real numbers form a subset of the complex numbers. But in that case, all numbers are complex. At least the ones that are real.
--Dorothy
Quote: Nareed
What does bug me is when people say "X is the highest grossing movie of all time with $Y billions." Or for that matter any kind of monetary record, be it high prices, record sales, record earnings, etc. None os such reports takes inflation into account. A movie grossing $100 million in the 1950s sold more tickets than one grossing $100 million in the 70s (for example). The website Box Office Mojo has a list of movie earnings adjusted for inflation.
This has been a big topic lately with Avatar breaking so many records for gross.
The tricky thing is we don't have details on how many tickets movies sell -- theaters and studios only report the total grosses. So when you see adjusted totals, what happens is people try to use the average ticket price in a given year (which of course is really an estimate of an average), divide it by the amount the movie made in that year, and use that as a baseline of number of tickets sold. That is then multiplied by the average ticket price for the current year to get the adjusted figure.
Given that there is significant variance in ticket prices (true today and always) using the average is a very rough number -- for instance a movie like Snow White has sold a ton of tickets, but a much higher percentage of them were likely discounted children's tickets, so it is probably underrepresented in these adjustments. Big event movies that also represent some kind of spectacle -- be it widescreen in the '50s or color in the '30s or 3D IMAX today -- tend to have more expensive prices, so they tend to get overrepresented.
This is why using total gross in unadjusted dollars is useful. For the most part, it's pretty accurate (though a lot of the numbers are still kind of suspect). Trying to figure out inflation is a nightmare.
It would be nice if the movie studios or theaters would just publish attendance figures, but that's unlikely to happen.
Quote: whoever... duh... you wish... blonde?The tricky thing is we don't have details on how many tickets movies sell -- theaters and studios only report the total grosses. So when you see adjusted totals, what happens is people try to use the average ticket price in a given year (which of course is really an estimate of an average), divide it by the amount the movie made in that year, and use that as a baseline of number of tickets sold. That is then multiplied by the average ticket price for the current year to get the adjusted figure.
It would be nice if the movie studios or theaters would just publish attendance figures, but that's unlikely to happen.
The real question is not attendance, but what fraction of the population saw the movie. Normalize by population. In that case, I believe years ago I read a study that it was "Gone with the Wind." Some insane number, like 40% of the population saw it.
Quote:According to this article (Michelle Pautz, The Decline in Average Weekly Cinema Attendance, Issues in Political Economy, 2002, Volume 11; Adobe Acrobat pdf format), "One interesting aspect of cinema attendance is that during the Great Depression, which swept the United States in the 1930's, a higher percentage of the population went to the cinema each week than during the times of economic expansion and great prosperity the U.S. has seen since."
--Dorothy
Quote: DorothyGale
The real question is not attendance, but what fraction of the population saw the movie. Normalize by population. In that case, I believe years ago I read a study that it was "Gone with the Wind." Some insane number, like 40% of the population saw it.
Yeah, of course as you posted people went to the movies a lot more then, too (no competition from TV, Internet, or home video in the '30s). So if you want to fairly measure a movie's success, should we count the home video market and TV viewings, since most people who watch movies today watch them primarily at home?
In measuring per capita attendance across time, "Avatar" literally has to compete with itself, because everyone who debates going to see it in the theater knows they have the option of seeing it at home in a few months. Potential "Gone with the Wind" viewers had to see it then or face the possibility that they wouldn't get to see it -- ever.
Quote: JB
2) When I worked at a convenience store, they had an unusual way of determining their markup. They thought that marking a price up by x% was computed by dividing by (1-x). So for a 15% markup, they would divide their cost by 0.85. This is actually a markup of 17.65%, not 15%. I tried explaining this, but of course it did no good.
That's because you were calculating different things. You were calculating markup, while they were calculating margin.
Dr. Math has a good explanation. Markup and margin are two commonly confused business terms that mean subtlety different things. How much profit you make over what something cost you is your markup. Your margin is the percentage of the sale price that is your profit.
Quote: stephenThis is why using total gross in unadjusted dollars is useful. For the most part, it's pretty accurate (though a lot of the numbers are still kind of suspect). Trying to figure out inflation is a nightmare.
It would be nice if the movie studios or theaters would just publish attendance figures, but that's unlikely to happen.
Living with inflation is a nightmare, too. Try 100% yearly inflation sometime if you don't believe me (and I hope those days are gone). Anyway, it is an important factor, and I'd say a determining factor when comapring movie earnings.
Of course people don't understand inflation, much less the cumulative effcet of inflation over time. They ahrdly understand percentages.
As to attendance, I suppose theaters do keep a count of how many tickets they sell to a given show. I've no idea why such figures aren't reported. Of course, in day to day operations, what matters is how many tickets you sell. Still, for theaters which sell ads that run prior to a movie, attendance figures should be important.
Quote: DorothyGaleQuote: NareedThe speed of sound _is_ complex.
I thought it was a positive real number. Of course, you could argue that real numbers form a subset of the complex numbers. But in that case, all numbers are complex. At least the ones that are real.
--Dorothy
:)
I didn't say the figure for the speed of sound is complex. I said the speed as such is complex, meaning it's complicated. The figures, of course, is a simple real number.
I wonder what you have to say about sub-prime loans ;)
Quote: MoscaThis reminds me of the time my boss tried to cut my commission rate from 12% to 10%. I freaked. In our meeting, he said, "What's the big deal? It's a 2% cut!" To which I replied, "It's 2% to you, but it's almost 17% to me!" (These were both actually shouted.)
I gave my notice, and before the day was out I'd had 3 calls from people who heard it through the grapevine. I got hired somewhere else at 18%, which I negotiated myself. Less volume, but higher rate, meant same pay for less work, which is always good.
Sounds like you worked at a place I used to when they put in a new pay plan. Before the service people (not me, I was in management) got 20% and that was it. Then they put n an incentive plan that ran from 18-25%. Turnover was mostly unaffected. I didn't notice at first and no one did, but eventually when some of the managers didn't get it I pointed out that you were affecting someones pay by over 25% if they had a bad month, which was often in the fall and winter as we were a seasonal business. It gets worse. At first it was based on what your quality made the previous month, so if a guy was making 25% he would hound you for extra work and if he was at 18% you had to use a pistol to get him to do extra. Then they said, "this isn't working" and made ti the current month's quality, which got worse because they had even less idea what their bonus would be.
One of my bossed would get POed at me when I said the plan is too complicated and too many swings. He said, "It's simple" and I replied that when college educated managers can't explain it to their employees in certain it is too complicated.
I swear I could give a class on "Unintended Consequences of Math 101" with case studies from there alone.
I learned how to do basic addition and subtraction by playing Monopoly as a kid and dealing in paper money. When I landed on Pennsylvania Avenue and gave the owner a $50 bill, I knew for certain that he'd better give me $22 in change. I learned a bit of multiplication in computing the rent on Electric Company or Water Works.
And anyway, why take away the glorious pleasure of being able to fondle a stack of beautiful orange $500's?
Quote: gDGBDThe dumbing down continues with the release of the 75th Anniversary edition of Monopoly, which has eliminated paper currency in favor of an electronic bank that keeps track of everything.
I learned how to do basic addition and subtraction by playing Monopoly as a kid and dealing in paper money. When I landed on Pennsylvania Avenue and gave the owner a $50 bill, I knew for certain that he'd better give me $22 in change. I learned a bit of multiplication in computing the rent on Electric Company or Water Works.
Thanks, now you make me feel bad. At my house we have two house rules to speed up the game:
1. No rent on colored properties (does not include railroads or utilities) unless there is at least one house.
2. Pay a flat $200 for income tax.
No wonder my kids could be doing better in math.
