Math knowledge of the general population?

[The Carnivore]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Simple datastream: How many play the lottery?

Are they intending to donate to whatever the house is sponsoring, or do they instead think they might beat the house?

I play the lottery even though I'm well aware of the odds. It's entertainment, just like a movie or a sports game. You can't win if you don't play, so I'll pay $1 or $2 for a non-zero chance of striking it rich. It's my license to fantasize and daydream. Heck, GIMPS has worse odds:
https://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=13335

With that said, I don't think I've ever spent more than $10 a year on lotto tickets. Personally, I don't think that losing 0.01-0.02% of your income is a big deal, even though some may think otherwise..........

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by The Carnivore

"Suppose, a litre of cola costs US$3.15. If you buy one third of a litre of cola, how much would you pay?"

That depends on what cola costs packaged in 1/3-liter bottles. :) I don't even know whether cola comes in that bottle size anywhere in the world, so let's use the closest approximation based on some common US sizes, where here 'oz' of course refers to fluid ounce:

12.5-oz: $0.89
16-oz.: $0.99
20-oz: $1.49
1L (~28-oz): $1.89

So the pricing is at least monotone here - this is not always true - but nonlinear. See, there you go making hidden assumptions in your math word problems again. :)

Mod note: The sexy-numbers subdiscussion has been moved into its own thread and given an adults-only warning. :)

[The Carnivore]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

16-oz.: $0.99
20-oz: $1.49

That's odd. It's 6.19 cents per ounce for a 16-oz bottle, but 7.45 cents per ounce for a 20-oz bottle. Most things are much cheaper when bought in bulk.

It reminds me of a menu I saw at a local restaurant a few years ago. All kebabs sold there were roughly the same size.
6 chicken kebabs - $7.99
-Some other items-
6 steak kebabs - $9.99
-Some other items-
Combos:
6 steak kebabs & 6 chicken kebabs - $18.99

They went out of business the following year.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

1L (~28-oz): $1.89

1L ~33.8 oz American.

[chalsall]

Someone who's opinion I take seriously said I went a little too far in my "creative writing" last night.

Sincerely, I never mean to cause offense.

But as someone who tries to be funny, I will always test the limits.

[tServo]

Originally Posted by retina

Not all draws have a negative expected return.

Indeed, as a retired couple from Michigan discovered.
He read about a new lotto game and then started to examine its rules closely. He found a flaw.
They bet heavily on it and were getting a 60% return.
When that game closed, they heard about a similar one in Massachusetts and started in on that one. There was a separate group at MIT who also betting on it.
The Michigan couple made 8 million dollars and the MIT group cleared 3.5 million.

Just think, if their mindset was to gloss over and automatically dismiss anything to do with lottery they would have missed this opportunity.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jerry-a...es-2019-06-09/

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by The Carnivore

That's odd. It's 6.19 cents per ounce for a 16-oz bottle, but 7.45 cents per ounce for a 20-oz bottle. Most things are much cheaper when bought in bulk.

If you think the example ewmayer cited is "odd," I can only conclude that you either don't do your own grocery shopping, or haven't been paying attention to pricing in grocery stores for quite some time.

Putting things in larger packages saves on packaging costs. Merchants used to pass these savings on to consumers, offering things in the "large economy size."

However, they began dispensing with this practice at least a couple of decades ago, and started charging higher unit prices for things in larger packages. This practice has become more widespread as time has gone on. My theory is, they're counting on suckers consumers simply assuming that the merchant will pass obvious cost savings on to the consumer, and not doing any smart checking.

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by lycorn

LOL... The folks from FES would need to start their answer by explaining how the ship could disappear at all.

The universal draw distance constant of course.

[LaurV]

Why do you need an hour for this? It is just simple area problem, write the area of the triangle in two ways, or apply Pythagoras in the two triangles and add.


Edit: Geeezzz, four pages? Let me read them!

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by retina

Hey Siri, how much ... ?

Okay Google, what is ... ?

Alexa, ... ?

Why bother to learn anything when someone else has already done the hard work?

Haha, coming from you, the "no JS" and "no IOT" guy, it seems soooo funny! I can't stop laughing.

[alpertron]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

If you think the example ewmayer cited is "odd," I can only conclude that you either don't do your own grocery shopping, or haven't been paying attention to pricing in grocery stores for quite some time.

Putting things in larger packages saves on packaging costs. Merchants used to pass these savings on to consumers, offering things in the "large economy size."

However, they began dispensing with this practice at least a couple of decades ago, and started charging higher unit prices for things in larger packages. This practice has become more widespread as time has gone on. My theory is, they're counting on suckers consumers simply assuming that the merchant will pass obvious cost savings on to the consumer, and not doing any smart checking.

In Argentina merchants are required to indicate the price per kg or liter, so this cheat cannot be done.