What can I say? Math is hard.
"How big is it?" "Eight pieces."
I wouldn't comment on that one - oh wait maybe I will.
NYC pizzerias sell you slices (8/pie) buut if you but a whole large pie, it will be 8 slices but the slices will be smaller than if you bought 8 individual slices. So the pies are not standardized and the "8 slices" doesn't make sense. However a medium pie is 6 slices and although I never took out my tape measure - and I never ordered a "medium" pie - I would bet that the area of each slice is about the same. Or not. Thanks for reading.
Okay, next point:
I used to live in South Lake Tahoe. Its amazing how many broke people told me they "win" all the time in the casinos. Who do they think built the casinos.
The only gambling I do is stock market :-) and every couple of years I might buy a lottery ticket - I'd including getting on NYC taxis, but generally that's a different kind of gambling.
The casinos are a losing proposition.
Except for those who win (the house).
But they don't lie.
They explicitly say "it's for entertainment".
Which is true, unless it bores you out of your head.
Some people, a significant portion of the population, have conceptual difficulties with things like P/Es, fractional ratios etc. They won't buy a stock with a large price all that other math stuff doesn't mean anything to them.
Hence when the price comes down they think its cheaper.
Who doesn't like a sale?
Only $5.00 each, 3 for 16.98 !
As I said previously, for some, regardless of education, sometimes it's easier to buy things at a lower price than to save the $ and then buy (more) at a higher price. As for fractional shares, I never heard of that at least for conventional accounts.
In the college where I taught there was a course called "remedial fractions".
Before anyone scoffs at the idea - many bright kids went to less than bright high schools or had home life the same (growing up is hard - those that scoff, I congratulate on their extreme will). The college had a program to bring these kids up to speed.
A good percent of the kids did well with their "second chance".
I had a few in my computer course - some did very well, but a few really struggled.
But it's scary that many people don't have the basic concepts of math.
Even more scary, the number of people who don't understand basic logic.
I say even more scary, because some of these people are well educated and couldn't figure out a simple problem in logic even if their head was put into a helium balloon. |
