On 5/29/2011 4:12, Rudy Velthuis wrote:
> simply because it is not very pragmatic not to know them.

Indeed. Actually, there was one event that eventually convinced my very 
smart wife that there are *actually* people in the world who are not very 
smart. She'd never actually encountered it as a gut feeling before.

We're in a store. We're buying something that's $20, but 60% off. The clerk 
is taking *minutes* to try to figure out the price. She finally digs out a 
calculator, figures out the answer is 12, and then hopelessly says "But is 
that the discount, or the price?" My wife finally snaps and goes "It's 60%! 
It's more than half!"

So, yeah, I think you must have at some point memorized the multiplication 
tables and used them a bit to get a feeling for such things.

Nowadays, I like to torture people when I buy $10.20 worth of stuff by 
giving the person a $20, waiting until they've rung it up, then handing them 
another $0.25 coin, and watch them struggle helplessly trying to figure out 
what the change should be on their own. (Actually, there's a dilbert about 
that that's pretty funny.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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