{"id":11406,"date":"2010-08-14T11:49:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-14T11:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/08\/14\/innumeracy-in-the-checkout-line\/"},"modified":"2010-08-14T11:49:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-14T11:49:42","slug":"innumeracy-in-the-checkout-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/08\/14\/innumeracy-in-the-checkout-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Innumeracy in the Check-Out Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sarah Lee frozen pies were on sale, three for $10, at the local supermarket. I bought two, but they rang up as $4.99 each. I pointed out to the check-out girl that this was wrong, and she sent a 'gofer' to confirm my claim. Right I was. But now the lass was perplexed, having to input the correct amount by hand and brain. She had to ask me what 10 divided by 3 is. <\/span><\/span><\/span>I was nice, not rude, and just gave her the answer sparing her any commentary. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

(It's a crappy job, standing up eight hours per day, in a confined space, an appendage of a machine. I make a point of trying to relate to the attendants, male and female, as persons, at the back of my mind recalling a passage in Martin Buber's I-Thou<\/em> in which he says such a relation is possible even in the heat of a commute between passenger and bus driver.) <\/font><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But now I can be peevish. They learn how to put on condoms in these liberal-run schools but not how to add, subtract, multiply and divide? And how many times have I encountered pretty young things in bars and restaurants who are clueless when it comes to weights and measures?  At a P. F. Chang's the other day I asked whether the beer I wanted to order was 22 oz.  The girl said it was a pint, "whatever that is." This was near Arizona State and it is a good bet that she was a student there.  How can such people not know that there are two pints in a quart, that a pint is 16 fluid ounces, that four quarts make a gallon , . . . , that a light-year is a measure of distance not of time, . . . .<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Can we blame this one on libruls too?  You betcha!  A librul is one who has never met a standard he didn't want to undermine.<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You many enjoy John Allen Paulos, <\/font>Innumeracy<\/font><\/a>.  In case it isn't obvious, innumeracy is the mathematical counterpart of illiteracy.<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sarah Lee frozen pies were on sale, three for $10, at the local supermarket. I bought two, but they rang up as $4.99 each. I pointed out to the check-out girl that this was wrong, and she sent a 'gofer' to confirm my claim. Right I was. But now the lass was perplexed, having … Continue reading “Innumeracy in the Check-Out Line”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[476,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-varia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}