People are math challenged

The 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.

Quote: Nareed

The 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.

Since 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.

Quote: cclub79

Since 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.

Quote: cclub79

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.

They could be dropping the 'dollars' simply to save two sylables. After all, as you pointed out, everybody understands what they are saying.

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: DJTeddyBear

Quote: cclub79

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.

They could be dropping the 'dollars' simply to save two sylables. After all, as you pointed out, everybody understands what they are saying.

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?

I have a couple of things to add that have to do with marking up prices:

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: AZDuffman

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Quote: cclub79

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.

They could be dropping the 'dollars' simply to save two sylables. After all, as you pointed out, everybody understands what they are saying.

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.

This 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.