People are math challenged

Quote: gDGBD

And anyway, why take away the glorious pleasure of being able to fondle a stack of beautiful orange $500's?

Maybe it's a government thing.

Maybe they're getting tired of hearing "This looks like Monopoly money," every time there's a new design for US money...

Quote: gDGBD

And anyway, why take away the glorious pleasure of being able to fondle a stack of beautiful orange $500's?

Speaking of which, the European Monetary Union is printing record amounts of the €500 note. This high value note is now up to 35% of the value in Euro banknotes in circulation. The ECB is now catering to every drug-lord, money launderer, petty tyrant, tax evader, and human trafficker in the world. Roughly €500=$681 and they are circulating almost two notes for every man woman and child in the Euro Zone.

You have to hand it to the British. Their biggest note is still £50=$78 and they are only circulating three of them per capita. They get by fine with coins, and £5, £10, and £20 banknotes. It is very difficult to deal with drug money in Britain. Because the £50 note is so rare, if you are trying to carry around US$1 million in £20 banknotes it weighs 70 lbs + weight of the suitcase.

Quote: gDGBD

The 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.

The only times I was ever able to finish a monopoly game, were when we played it on a computer. When playing on a board, the games went on forever and accounting mistakes killed things early.

speaking of the Brits with successful coins, the Canadians are reportedly having great success with their dollar coins, while the US struggles to get them accepted.

The reason, I've been told, is that paper Canadian dollars are no longer printed!

Of course that should be the solution in the US.

Yep. Us Canadians have great success with $1 and $2 coins, but we can't light a freakin' cauldron.

The $1 coin (The loonie) was introduced in 1987 and replaced the $1 bill. The $2 coin (The Toonie) was introduced in 1996 and replaced our $2 bill. Banks collected all remaining currency, so $1 and $2 bills are collector's items. I completely prefer the coins to the small bills.

Oh, you can light it all right.

You just couldn't get it up!

Quote: DJTeddyBear

...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.

Did you know that seven fifths of children nowadays don't understand fractions!

Quote: samspruce

Did you know that seven fifths of children nowadays don't understand fractions!

Children? Heck I bet seven fifths of adults don't understand fractions neither!

Thats only a partial explanation. Yogi Berra can fill in the the remainder with the quote, "90% of the game is half mental".

So there ya have it, fractions for the people we can never understand.

Quote: samspruce

Did you know that seven fifths of children nowadays don't understand fractions!

That's hilarious.

It reminds me of the time I got a phishing spam email regarding the Fifth Third Bank. My immediate reaction was, "Can't they come up with a better fictitious name?"

It was months later when traveling in Ohio that I saw a branch and realized that it's a real bank!


https://www.53.com/

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Quote: samspruce

Did you know that seven fifths of children nowadays don't understand fractions!

That's hilarious.

It reminds me of the time I got a phishing spam email regarding the Fifth Third Bank. My immediate reaction was, "Can't they come up with a better fictitious name?"

It was months later when traveling in Ohio that I saw a branch and realized that it's a real bank!


https://www.53.com/

Reminds me of an old "Dilbert" where the Boss got upset when he found out 40% of sick days were taken on either a monday or a friday.

Quote: AZDuffman

Reminds me of an old "Dilbert" where the Boss got upset when he found out 40% of sick days were taken on either a monday or a friday.

:)

In a very old Dilbert the Boss informs the engineers the company wil no longer pay for PDAs, but till still pay for travel to professional conferences. In the last frame the Boss is looking at requests for travel to "Palm Pilot, California."

i remember when i was little in math class, the teacher would ask everyone a question, 2seconds later id give an answer while all the other students were still plugging numbers into their calculator. i always thought long division was the stupidest thing ever. wtf is a remainder? or carrying digits while doing multiplication. the way they teach you to do multiplication is so slow and tedious.

for example like 18 x 28, they teach you to do 8x8, you get 64 so write down 4 and carry a 6, then make a zero on the next line, and do 8 x 2 for 16 plus the 6 you carried, then you write 22 in front of the zero you wrote down and add those two lines together to get 224, then you put another zero down, and multiply 1 x 8 to get an 8 and put that in front of the zero, then put two more zeros down, and do 1 x 2 to get 2 and put 2 in front of the two zeros, then add those two lines together, plus the result of the other lines together, and you get a number.

seriously who came up with such a slow and tedious process?

when all you gotta do is (20 x 28) - (2 x 28).

two calculations that should be instanteneous for anyone with half a brain.

Quote:

when all you gotta do is (20 x 28) - (2 x 28)

Or (30 x 18) - (2 x 18) = 504.

All multiplication is (28 x 8) + (28 x 10) = 224 + 280 = 504.

my point being (20x28) - (2x28) is faster to compute in your head than (28x8) + (28x10).

Quote: rudeboyoi

two calculations that should be instantaneous for anyone with half a brain.

I guess then I don't have even that half-brain! I couldn't do it with pencil and paper!

Well I disagree with your premise. When in real life (non-work related) are you going to have to know more than 12x12? I work statistics at pretty much all sporting events and it's all computer-based now. With computers and calculators so easily accessible, I believe these kids should have the theoretical knowledge of long division and long multiplication but it's utterly not important anymore in today's society. I spent 3-4 years learning this ridiculous math when in fact I could now be learning advanced quantum mechanics (I'm taking only a 3rd year class right now) if we had skipped it. Honestly, if we cut out all that bullshit in our educational system we could easily skip at least 2 years of elementary school.

Also, I think you are vastly overestimating the average intelligence of a human being. I would say one-third of the population couldn't be taught basic kinematics by Richard Feynman himself. Lastly, I think if you didn't learn it the "long" and "harder" way you wouldn't be able to think in terms of how you are now. The way they teach us is a good, basic, and logical way to do it. The way you (and I) do it is just as logical, but as straight-forward and basic. In other words, our way changes for every problem whereas this way does not.

A father told me this: he tells his son he needs to learn multiplication tables because he might not always have a calculator. The kid says, "oh come on we will always have calculators now."

He couldnt come up with a response. The kid was right.

I do have a pocket calculator with me most of the time these days.

I think being able to do math in your head is fairly important. When you go to a store to buy things for example, boxes of the same things come in different sizes and quantities for different prices and it's good to know what kind of deal you are getting. When at the auto dealership, it's good to know how to do a quick calculation of taxes, freight, etc. so that you can know what you are going to pay. When you drive every day, it's good to be able to make a basic calculation of when you're going to get there based on distance.

Certainly quantum mechanics has much, much, less practical implications then basic mathematics. The only time you would quote Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or Schrodinger's equation is to unimpress a girl or within the confines of a University. I took those classes, and today, I have no idea what a Hamiltonian is... I can express to people the meaning of Quantum Mechanics and that you can't observe with complete accuracy the location of an object at any given time, that particles have different states and that each state has a probability, etc, but it has no meaning in my daily life.

Where would Feynman be if he didn't know his basic math?

Just because you have access to a calculator or a computer doesn't mean that you have to use it. You're going to forget the long division and multiplication principles if you don't use it in your daily life. Even at the casino last weekend, when someone was dealt a straight flush in Caribbean Stud, he was impressed that I was able to calculate the odds were about 72,000:1. That wasn't because I had the odds memorized, it was because I could calculate 48 x 49 x 50 x 51 x 52 / (36 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2) = 49 x 10 x 17 x 26 / 3 = (490 x 442) / 3 = 72,193.333 : 1. I needed a napkin to do it, but it was fairly easy to do so.

Quote: boymimbo

I think being able to do math in your head is fairly important. When you go to a store to buy things for example, boxes of the same things come in different sizes and quantities for different prices and it's good to know what kind of deal you are getting.

It is fairly important as one means of excersicing the mind. But there are other mental excercises yuo can do.

I usually carry two cellphones with me (mine and the company's), both of which have a calculator. I use that at the store if I want to figure out something. My backup is a pen and a small sheet of paper.

Oh, the one area where mental math is very, very useful is card counting in BJ.

Play video #16 at Tom Breitling's web site . The video is called casino losses. The one executive, Tim Poster says the laws of probability still exist at the Golden Nugget, just like they do everywhere else ... it's like a bubble, almost, and the bubble can only get so big before it bursts. When it bursts the casino is there to pick up the pieces .

Background information, this was the year 2004, and these two young men bought the Golden Nugget from MGM-MIRAGE for $215 million. Tim Poster decided to greatly increase the maximum craps bet and to introduce 6X-8X-10X odds to attract big time players.

While professing gambling savvy, Tim's bubble argument is just the standard gambler's fallacy that what's past influences the future. He is just putting a statistical spin on it.

Also, by saying that the law's of probability apply at the GN, just like anywhere else, he is simply talking about expected value, and not variance. By raising the table maximums high enough he is inviting in players who have personal fortunes to rival the casino owners. The two men had invested $25 million apiece of their own money (which was roughly half their net worth).

Normally the casino's bankroll will outlast that of any player, but these super whales who knew a good opportunity decided to avail themselves of it. The casino has to book all bets and can't walk away ... it can only change the limits and bar certain players. Its possible that when one of those two executives said Players he meant customers in general but the other executive was focused on the individual customers who could simply walk away with their chips rather than continue at the tables.

I still think that one guy with the entourage, the same dice call, the no breaks, etc. may have been scamming them.
Just because the guy got rich in some computer programming venture doesn't mean he is honest and upright. He may simply have gone from switching his own dice into the game at a ten dollar table to switching his own dice into the game at a ten million dollar table.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

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.

I think you forget that for most of those in the casino it is YOUR generation that thinks Two Zeros is twice as good and that it is YOUR generation that flocks to a casino if its marguee features 6:5 in two-foot high letters. The problem is not with the NEXT generation. We have met the enemy and he is us.

>Sigh.... Thanks for letting me rant.
Okay, now I'll rant for just a wee bit:

Consider this oft bandied-about figure of 1 in 8 and breast cancer. At best its meaningless propaganda, in reality it is intentionally deceptive and misleading. Yet try getting all those women marching around with pink ribbons to realize that. One doctor long ago presented five different treatments and a mathematically correct evaluation of each of them. He then had people allocate to the five various treatments whatever portion of a theoretical Million Dollar Research Fund they wanted. Of course all these different sums for different treatments having differently expressed mathematical results were really just five different ways of describing the exact same result. People were generally unable to deal with the data and realize there were no differences at all.

Consider all these Nigerian email scams, all these "Deposit this check and send us a portion" scams, consider all these Accept Merchandise At Your Home and then Ship It To Us" frauds, consider perhaps Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Its not the next generation that is math challenged. It is THIS generation that gets fooled far too often. Until a few short months ago, one casino had a website that stated "The odds are in YOUR favor". Now maybe it was a nice casino but I sure know that whatever the odds were, they were NOT in the player's favor but that web page was not aimed at the NEXT generation! It was aimed at YOU!!

For years re-zoning petitions have required impact statements that are an utter joke. Simpson's Paradox abounds in any such advocacy document. Politicians and lawyers know the public is math challenged already and don't have to worry about fooling the next generation of voters! They only have to fool this generation of voters!

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. A wide reaching claim made by Professor Emeritus Bartlett of University of Colorado at Boulder.

Since nearly every financial scheme, or errors made in gambling statistics, or mistake made in government projections is the inability to understand exponential expressions.

Quote: pacomartin

the inability to understand exponential expressions.

Exponential expressions? I'm having enough trouble with the callouses on my fingers from doing addition!

I've dealt me some cards and added them up. Then I shuffle them and see if I get the same total. That way I'm getting practice. Soon I hope to get the totals to come out the same.

In my experience it's very common for cashiers to ask for an extra coin or two. Either to round up the change you are due or to preserve coins, when they are running low on small change.

This can however go horribly wrong when people are math challenged.

Some time ago I was at a large department store and had to pay €19. I give a fifty to the girl working the registry. The following exchange occurs:

Checkout girl: do you have an extra euro?
Me: here you go (I figured she was out of 1 euro coins and only had 2 euro coins in the registry)
Checkout girl: (hands me a €10 and a €20 bill) Thanks, have a nice day.
Me: Ehm... you still owe me 2 euro.
Checkout girl: No, I gave you your change
Me: You only gave my €30, but you owed me €32
Checkout girl: -blank stare-
Me: Look, I gave you fifty for a 19 euro item, you asked for an extra euro so you still owe me 2 euro.
Checkout girl: (hands me a 1 euro coin)
Me: Ok, now you still owe me 1 euro
Checkout girl: But I just gave you a euro.
Me: Yes, you gave me back the euro I gave you, but I still need another euro
Checkout girl: I already gave you a euro.
*** this goes back and forth for a while ***
Me: Let's just forget I ever gave you the extra euro that you handed back. Just pretend that exchange never happened. Now, I gave you fifty and you had to give me 31 in change. You only gave me 30, so I'm still 1 short.
Checkout girl: No, I already gave you a euro.
Me: aaarghhhh
*** several people in line behind me try to nod reassuring to the girl that she indeed still owes me a euro and I am not trying to con her ***
Me: How much change do I get for a fifty when I buy something for 19?
Checkout girl: -blank stare- (I can tell she's really feeling nervous by this time)

This went on for several minutes more and no other personnel showed up to help this poor girl out. Eventually she handed me the euro, but I'm sure she had no idea whether I had justed conned her for €1 or not. I really hope the balance of the registry worked out that night and wasn't a euro short from some other mistake.

Oh yeah, this store has quite modern registries that calculate the change automatically. She just thought she was making life simpler by asking for an extra euro when she had to give me €31.

Heck, I was challenged by the math from just reading that post!

Quote: stephen

It would be nice if the movie studios or theaters would just publish attendance figures, but that's unlikely to happen.

When "Is There Sex After Death" opened in some Manhattan independent movie theater specializing in art films there was a promotional truck parked outside with things like Test Your Peter Power and similar carnival type advertizing for the movie. Unknown to the theater management they had a 24 hour camera on the box office and the distributor of the movie tried to sue for anticipated profits had the actual sales figures been accurately reported. Management of the movie theater even had two extra showings that were not reported and sales figures for what showing were reported were under-reported.