I was at a cafe the other day, I asked the girl at the counter for a cup of hot water. It's a 12 oz. paper cup. I tell her, "Fill it about 3/4."
She hesitates, then "Fractions aren't my strong point, can you show me how much you'd like?" I had to point to the level to dispense.
That's right - "3/4 to the top" literally boggled her mind! I fall into a melancholia, I fear for posterity... h*mo sapiens had a good run, but nothing lasts forever...
"I'll sell my bonds." - Ronald Reagan
Go to the local fast food joint, order a super size menu item, then ask for a small or medium cup instead of the large cup.
They're like deer in head lights, amazing.
Cheers
Rich, that's a good story but what was the poor girl supposed to do? Make a rough guess as to when it was 7 ounces of hot water? That would be pretty tough even for me, unless you have the little lines on the side of the cup. A lot of people can't just "eyeball" a certain amount of ounces in a paper cup. How do you know how wide the cup is?
-Paul Popinjay
Two male mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math.
The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer one third x cubed.
She repeats "one thir -- dex cue"? He repeats "one third x cubed". Her: `one thir dex cuebd'? Yes, that's right, he says. So she agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself, "one thir dex cuebd...".
The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his point, that most people do know something about basic math. He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first laughingly agrees. The second man calls over the waitress and asks "what is the integral of x squared?". The waitress says "one third x cubed" and while walking away, turns back and says over her shoulder "plus a constant!"
Yeah but I bet she was hot.
Not everybody has math instincts. Maybe she has other talents, like speaking three languages or something. Or maybe she's just dumb... there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
John
John, could YOU tell when it would have been 3/4 of the paper cup full just by sight and without measuring it? Even though a paper cup in a cafe is supposed to be the 12-oz size, a lot of them aren't really 12 ounces. What if it had been 14 ounces if filled all the way to the top? Then what would you have done? I agree that the girl probably just wasn't very bright. But a lot of women are like that. Figuring things out just doesn't seem to be their cup of tea. But I don't think you want to talk down to them or ridicule them. Maybe I misjudged the tone of your post.
-Paul Popinjay
[snip crap]
Uncle Al says, "Heteronormatism problematizes homosocial othering." Did you get laid? QED.
-- Uncle Al http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/ (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals) http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2
Then it would be 16 ounces, which wouldn't fit, unless you turned the cup around or took a reciprocal or square roots, or converted it to metric or caused a phase change. I have a degree from Upstairs Milpitas Technical Institute so I know these things.
Keyword: "about". It means approximately. The information "It's a 12 oz. paper cup" was redundant.
3/4 * 12 = 9. Paper cups are usually a section of a cone with the small end closed, although for drinking cold water in small quantities the small end diameter is often zero.
I thought he only mentioned "12 oz paper cup" once, but even so. Obviously he didn't expect the girl to measure it. But what if the cup was actually more than 12 ounces? What if it held 14 ounces, even though it was assumed to hold 12? Would you end up with the cup being under-filled? Why not just order a "medium" and hope that it was close to the 7 ounce mark that Rich was hoping to get?
-Paul P.
By height, sure, within a few per cent probably. I could probbably also make a decent instinctive correction to 3/4 volume, based on eyeballing the taper.
I have very good size and volume instincts. I can tell fairly precisely if the beans in a round pot will fit into a rectangular plastic container, stuff like that. 3/4 full is second nature to us visual-spatial types. My wife is very smart but helpless with stuff like sizes and volumes and fractions and algebra. But she's a speech pathologist and can do other things I couldn't dream of. People are different.
And some people just aren't very smart. As I said, there's nothing wrong with that. They may have other virtues and, anyhow, people who are smart got that way by accident, so have no cause to be proud or smug.
A lot of people here think that being smart makes them superior. Now
*that's* dumb.John
Does Milpitas have an upstairs? Looks pretty flat to me.
John
It's always a laugh when the cash register breaks down at the local gas station and the clerks have to make change by hand. Three times she kept giving me too much change and was annoyed when I kept trying to give it back to her. Someone behind me in line mumbled something at which she hissed
"I graduated from High School!"
Finally, walking out with her best attempt (still in my favor), I heard the guy behind me say
"Ok, I've got three donuts at $0.69 each..."
It's possible she's a math genius and figured you weren't.
"3/4 full" is not the same as "3/4 to the top". You're dealing with a truncated cone, not a cylinder
I think both Rich and the girl assumed the paper cup was only12 ounces. If unbeknownst to them the cup was actually 14 or 15 ounces, he'd have to ask for her to fill it with more water to get the same results. In that case if he'd asked for 5/8ths full I would not have expected her to get it right. I would be surprised if she did.
-Paul P.
Why didn't you just get a full cup and throw what you didn't want away?
It's a no brainer.
Wheher it's an EPS plastic cup or a paper cup, it would be a very good approximation to assume that the inner (liquid filled) volume of the cup was a circular frustum, so I guess you could solve for the correct ratio of perpendicular fill heights, but the algebra might be a bit messy (a rare opportunity to use the closed form cubic solution, maybe?). The actual draft angle isn't usually that much so eyeballing would be close enough.
Maybe it would be easier if she filled three cups to the normal level, and then divided the total amount into four equal portions using a fourth empty cup, then discarded the left-over quarter and then combined the contents of the remaining three into one of the cups. ;-)
In practice I'd just ask her to fill it and dump out the excess myself-- it would be the fastest way.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it\'s the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Really? Try again. Begin by "reading" instead of snipping, then you won't have to think, all the information will be there.
Electrosmog - insert cave man apologistic logic here mercury shots - insert cave man apologistic logic here lack of oxygen - insert cave man apologistics here lower skool standards - insert cave man apologistics here "the news is what we say it is" - insert cave man apologistics here not read/write books or software - insert cave man apologistics here mythbusters is the Nr 1 science show - insert cave man apologistics here Kill people to have entertainments - insert cave man apologisics here
Looks to me like it's time for mankind to die now.
Lets not try to think about it to much.
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