'One of the Most Vivid Arithmetic Failings Displayed by Americans'

Ha, I forgot about that, I also forgot about my own shop. We always backfig ured the tax. If price tag said $150 it was $150 out the door. The receipt might say $138.57 but it is a Cnote and a half total. They did not pay the tax, we did, in the event of a refund which was extremely rare, they only g et the $138.57 of course. But it only happened once.

People wanted to upgrade, so they came to the shop. Upgrade was not a dirty word back then. Our customers did just stop by to see what we had. Some of them would call and ask if we got any new sets in.

How about "Speed Limiit 1/.05711*Pi". Though that would only make sense to about .1% of the public.

i get 5.57 out of that. Did you leave out a zero or something ?

I probably should have written that as (1/.05711)*Pi

Thinking about this, it probably isn't a good idea as that most people would probably get out their I-Phone Calculator app and end up driving off the side of the road.

They resist change yet they have got to be first to 'Upgrade" to the latest whatever that they have no clue what the change is.

Hold on now, it might not be such a bad idea. Get these assholes off the road.

Yeah. E-Darwinism. Survival of the Undumbest.

I was just thinking and remembered this incident reported, might not be tru e but why would anyone make it up ? At a McD's someone ordered a half dozen nuggets and the clerk said they don't have a half dozen, they have six or (whatever other amounts they come in) but not a half dozen.

I knew a guy who owned an Italian restaurant. He'd get calls on the order of "How many slices are in a large pizza?". He was thinking about having the kid in the back cut them into 16 slices. ...or maybe

1. ;-)

Could I get fo' bits worf?

If I had money, and that kid actually cut the pizza into 17 fairly equal sl ices I would consider putting him through engineering school.

I made a seven sided star as a logo years ago using Harvard Graphic FX. I a dmit I would not be able to do it by hand, or if I did it would take some s erious time.

But to cut into 17 pieces ? I would probably purposely make an error and ma ke one too big and then cut it in half. Shit, I would have to grab a calcul ator just to find out how many degrees of a circle is 1/17th. Then you need the trig tables, and then the center must be found. Damn, the kid would pr obably test out of the first year ! LOL

Can't really say I am proud to know what that means.

He did tell some who asked the stupid question that there were an odd number just to see if they noticed something wrong. They rarely did.

You would piss your panties, over numbered and lettered drills.

Because it is of the form 2^n+1 and a prime number, the regular 17-on can be constructed with compass and straight edge. So it should be easy.

Groetjes Albert

Indeed! When I was in Junior High School (called now a middle school), in drafting class I drew the three views of a dodecahedron (*), and won first place in drafting at the Southern West Virginia Student Craftsmen's Fair ;-)

(*) Twelve faces, faces are pentagons. ...Jim Thompson

How can you get away with that? When you refund, you are supposed to refund the sales tax as well, at least everywhere I've lived worked that way.

Ahh! that explains why I have seen a compass and straight edge lying on the prep counter.