http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ3Oz5JVKs

  "Do you recognize there's a difference between one dollar and one cent?"

  "Definitely."

  "Do you recognize there's a difference between half a dollar and half a
cent?"

  "Definitely."

  "Then, do you therefore recognize there's a difference between .002 dollars
and .002 cents?"

  "No."

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:498b1a76@news.povray.org...
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ3Oz5JVKs
>

Half of the company that I work for is a call center.  I'm not saying that 
they are all stupid, and that I'm all that smart, but when it comes to 
concepts like fractions or percentages, you will lose most of them. 
Unfortunately, t's probably true of a large percentage of the population.

Once, while explaining how much I was putting in my retirement account:
"My wife and I are both contributing 10%."
"Wow, so between the both of you, you're putting in 20%."
"No.  We're both putting in 10% of what we make."
"You're putting in 10% or your wife is?"
"Both of us are putting in 10%."
"Well then you're putting in 20% together."
"Ahhhhg!!!"

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:498b1a76@news.povray.org...
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ3Oz5JVKs
>
Here's the entire audio file, if you're bored.  I haven't listened to the 
whole thing, but the youtube was highly edited.  Anyway, this guy was very 
patient, and explained this problem multiple times to multiple people, and 
apparently never got a single employee to understand the problem.

http://media.putfile.com/Verizon-Bad-Math

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http://xkcd.com/verizon/

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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Warp wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ3Oz5JVKs

Such a classic!

A friend of mine recently had a similar conversation on the internet:


Ok, this one is too funny and I have to share. I usually don't post 
messages to internet forums, but I got an e-mail about Obama's 
"change.gov" website where citizens can voice their ideas. I was 
browsing through and ran across a posting that I felt I had to correct.

Them:
----------------------------
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to give each verified US citizen (or 
household) a one-time grant of $750,000 that could have been used to pay 
off or down mortgages, student loans, or school fees, car loans? Of 
course, folks would have also spent money on other things, clothes, 
cars, vacations, electronics, real estate, investments, savings, health 
care, whatever they wanted or desired.
That would have affected everyone, (even those of us who are not 
documented),and would have stimulated the economy for everyone. It would 
have been been cheaper than giving Bush & his fellow crooks 750 billion 
dollars to finish their ransacking of the US economy one last time 
before they left office.
[...]
If you give me a $1,000.00 stimulus check, I am going to buy groceries 
or pay down the electric /gas bill. Next month I still have to feed my 
family and the electric company will only raise their rates, knowing 
that the stimulus checks are in the mail.
[...]

Me:
--------------------------
$750,000 x 300,000,000 americans = $225,000,000,000,000

That's 225 trillion. So no, it's not cheaper. Not anywhere close.

To put that number into context, the federal budget (not counting 
medicare, medicade, and social security) is 1 trillion.

And if everyone has tons of money, everyone raises their rates (like you 
said the electric company will do if you have a $1,000 stimulus check.) 
It's called inflation, and the money would become practically worthless.

There's no magical solution, and the government can't just pay 
everything off.


Them:
-------------------------
Not to all Citizens,

Children who are still Dependants would not be eligible.
Nor would incarcerated individuals. I am sure that there could be a 
formulation that would lower the grant amount those over a certain 
income level.

Just open your mind to it for a minute. It's better that giving it to AIG


Me:
-------------------------
Even if you exclude criminals and give the money to households, that's 
roughly one out of every ten americans, and the number is $22 trillion.

I can open my mind, but numbers are numbers. You can't just dream up a 
magical solution that sounds exciting. You have to back it with facts 
and reality because in the end, we want life to get better, not to cause 
more problems.


Them:
-------------------------
I AM NOT A MATHEMATICIAN BUT I THINK THAT YOUR MATH MAY BE OFF.
WE HAVE 300 MILLION CITIZENS. IF WE GAVE EVERYONE 1 MILLION DOLLARS 
WOULDN'T THAT BE 300 MILLION DOLLARS? HOW DID WE GET 22 TRILLION FROM 
750 THOUSAND DOLLARS PER HOUSEHOLD?

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Kevin Wampler <wampler+pov### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> Them:
> -------------------------
> I AM NOT A MATHEMATICIAN BUT I THINK THAT YOUR MATH MAY BE OFF.
> WE HAVE 300 MILLION CITIZENS. IF WE GAVE EVERYONE 1 MILLION DOLLARS 
> WOULDN'T THAT BE 300 MILLION DOLLARS? HOW DID WE GET 22 TRILLION FROM 
> 750 THOUSAND DOLLARS PER HOUSEHOLD?

  I can understand that most people don't have a good grasp of very large
and very small numbers. Heck, even I have hard time grasping the magnitude
of something like "10^20 kilometers". From an astronomical point of view,
is that a very large distance or a very small distance? How large is it?

  However, some people seem to get completely lost with even the simplest
of equations when numbers get out of the 0.01 - 10^6 boundaries. It seems
that they can more or less grasp concept of that magnitude, but immediately
when numbers get out of that range, they are completely lost, and units and
magnitudes get hopelessly mixed.

  I find it curious how those people at Verizon don't seem to have a
problem in understanding the concept of (and difference between), for
example, 0.1 dollars and 0.1 cents, but when they see "amount of money
per unit equals 0.001" they immediately lose all grasp of the concept
of *units*, and only seem to see that *number* alone, without the context
of the unit. "There's no difference between 0.001 dollars and 0.001 cents.
They are the same number." Like the unit stopped mattering when we go out
of the safe boundaries.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   I find it curious how those people at Verizon don't seem to have a
> problem in understanding the concept of (and difference between), for
> example, 0.1 dollars and 0.1 cents, but when they see "amount of money
> per unit equals 0.001" they immediately lose all grasp of the concept
> of *units*, and only seem to see that *number* alone, without the context
> of the unit. "There's no difference between 0.001 dollars and 0.001 cents.
> They are the same number." Like the unit stopped mattering when we go out
> of the safe boundaries.

I heard of some study once which looked at what the poorest and best 
students had learned in a math class.  It turned out that the worst 
students had actually learned *more* concepts.  For instance, they 
learned the equation for the area of a square, the area of a rectangle, 
the area of a right triangle, etc.  The best students, however, only 
learned a few concepts, like "area" which they could than apply to solve 
many different problems.

I wonder if what's going on here is something like that where people 
have learned the concept of "multiply small numbers" without ever really 
grasping the meaning of "multiply" in general (or many even "number" in 
general).

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Kevin Wampler <wampler+pov### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> I heard of some study once which looked at what the poorest and best 
> students had learned in a math class.  It turned out that the worst 
> students had actually learned *more* concepts.  For instance, they 
> learned the equation for the area of a square, the area of a rectangle, 
> the area of a right triangle, etc.  The best students, however, only 
> learned a few concepts, like "area" which they could than apply to solve 
> many different problems.

> I wonder if what's going on here is something like that where people 
> have learned the concept of "multiply small numbers" without ever really 
> grasping the meaning of "multiply" in general (or many even "number" in 
> general).

  It probably is indeed a big problem that some people seem incapable of
seeing the big picture, the generic rules behind the specific examples,
when dealing with certain subjects. They only see (and often memorize)
the individual examples, but are incapable of making the connection to
a more abstract, more generic rule behind them.

  What I find strange in this particular example is that several people
at that company had the exact same misconception about numbers and monetary
units. (Deducing from the unedited recording those were not the first two
persons he was talking with about the subject.)

  I suppose that in their mind it goes something like this: Any monetary
amount which is larger or equal to 1 is in dollars, and anything smaller
than 1 (but larger than 0) is some amount of cents, ie. not dollars. Thus
for example a price of 10 is "dollars" (ten of them), while a price of
0.1 is "less than a dollar, ie. cents". Now their mind just tells them
that it's an amount in "cents", but fail to conceptualize exactly how
many cents. They just understand that it's "cents". Thus it becomes
"0.1 cents". Consequently "0.1 dollars" doesn't make sense to them because
0.1 is less than 1 dollar, and there can't be anything "less than a dollar".
Something less than a dollar is in cents, and thus it must be "0.1 cents".

  Of course where this becomes very confusing is what their brain is
telling them when they encounter something like "10 cents". They understand
that "10 cents" is *not* the same thing as "10 dollars", that 10 cents is
actually less than a dollar, but... Well, my logic fails to follow exactly
what goes through their mind at this point.

  Perhaps they can grasp the concept of integral amounts in different
units, but have hard time understanding the concept of fractional amounts
in different units. 10 is a nice integer, easy to count, so maybe they
understand "10 cents", because you can have physically 10 coints of 1 cent
each. However, when it becomes "0.1" it immediately becomes impossible
to grasp because you can't have 0.1 of a coin. At this point their brain
switches to a completely different "0.something is cents" mode.

  Maybe there's a connection failure between integers and decimals less
than 1. The general rule which applies to both is not there.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   It probably is indeed a big problem that some people seem incapable of
> seeing the big picture, the generic rules behind the specific examples,
> when dealing with certain subjects. They only see (and often memorize)
> the individual examples, but are incapable of making the connection to
> a more abstract, more generic rule behind them.

I find it problematic that a great number of subjects in school are taught 
this way, too. "Here's 30 examples. See if you can deduce what we're trying 
to teach you by showing these things."  Possibly because the teacher himself 
can't verbalize what he's trying to teach.

Even math classes do this sometimes.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   It probably is indeed a big problem that some people seem incapable of
> > seeing the big picture, the generic rules behind the specific examples,
> > when dealing with certain subjects. They only see (and often memorize)
> > the individual examples, but are incapable of making the connection to
> > a more abstract, more generic rule behind them.

> I find it problematic that a great number of subjects in school are taught 
> this way, too. "Here's 30 examples. See if you can deduce what we're trying 
> to teach you by showing these things."  Possibly because the teacher himself 
> can't verbalize what he's trying to teach.

> Even math classes do this sometimes.

  Can it be that even some elementary school math teachers don't themselves
fully understand the generic rules, and instead just blindly repeat the
examples of the textbooks?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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