Math Murder
In an age of legendary financial wizards who bet millions to make billions and wind up losing trillions, it’s no surprise that minimal intellect broadcast journalists are flunking arithmetic.
On CNBC, one “analyst” expostulated that a company she follows is so badly managed that its net earnings were down 761% in two years.
Mark says he learned in the recap of a Red Sox/Yankees game that it was “just the third time in Yankees history that they lost a game by at least five runs after leading by at lest six runs.”
That may be arithmetically correct, but it sets a new record for the misapplication of computing power to sports hype in the quest for claims to historic significance.
Mark’s son Jake is onto something considerably more enlightening when he asks, “Why was 6 afraid of 7?” The answer – because 7 8 9.
I miss George Carlin, who once reported on his fake news that scientists had discovered a new number. He said it was called bleen, and they thought it was located somewhere between 6 and 7.
To avoid losing your powers of rational thinking, do brain teasers:
You’re in a building with three electrical switches on the first floor. Two of them are dead. The other one controls a light on the second floor, which of course you can’t see. In figuring out which is the live switch, you’re allowed only one trip to the second floor.
(If and when you give up, the answer is lodged in the first comment, below.)
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Answer: Let’s call the switches 1, 2, and 3. Turn on 1 and 2. Then, after a while, turn off 2 and go to the second floor. If the light is on, #1 is the live one. If the light is off but the bulb is warm, it’s #2. If the light is off and the bulb is cold, it’s #3.
Comment by Al — May 3, 2009 @ 3:37 pm