What’s the difference between $.002 and .002¢? In the case of this customer complaint captured by failblog.org, the difference amounts to about $70 dollars on a phone bill. Alas, a customer service rep and a supervisor at Verizon refuse to accept they’re not the same amount.
Two things to do right away: Check your phone bill to make sure you haven’t been overcharged because of sloppy math. Then sell any stock you have in Verizon.
And while we’re on the subject of bad math in business, here’s a sign that fails on several levels. And before you’re tempted to conclude that the sign is correct because the customer is saving negative $49, do the math:
Oh my gosh. I can’t believe it. This is a shame and an indicator that we really have to look at and address how graduates are being turned out without a handle on basic math and it’s terminology.
The manager at Verizon said, “It’s obviously a difference of opinion.”
She’s obviously toeing the NCTM line. No critical thinking at all.
Well, Nancy Pelosi said with a straight face that 500 million Americans are losing their jobs every month. I believe it.
Ahem. Before we get all outraged and politicized here, blaming these and a thousand other glaring errors on the Obviously Failing American Schools– take a look at the bottom picture a little more closely. FailBlog.org is prone to clipping images from around the world–the cluttered display style of the window and the multiple languages visible make me think that this sign might in front of a business located in another country, or an American business run by a foreign-born merchant. It’s still amusing. But not really evidence that the educational sky is falling.
We’re all prone to errors–the first commenter, Anonymous, made a biggie. See if you can pick it out–second sentence, near the end.
Is American society increasingly lax about errors? Are all errors caused by our deteriorating education system? When, precisely, did this flood of errors in public media begin? Might there be better ways to talk about improving schools (a real issue of genuine concern) than these random potshots?
Anonymous used it’s instead of its, but no one has noticed found the math mistake in the sign yet (or perhaps the mistake is mine).
A sign in a mom and pop store is indeed, no biggie. But if Verizon is really overcharging customers because of their inability to distinguish between fractions of dollars and fractions of cents, that — if it were common to all phone bills — would have millions of dollars worth of ramifications. That *is* a big deal.
I intended the post to be amusing, not an indictment of math education. That said, as a 5th grade teacher I was often perturbed by the lack of rigor in elementary math instruction. I can’t say that the inability to distinguish between dollars and cents is a symptom of poor math instruction. But I can’t say it’s not, either.
You mean the fact that $69.98 minus $49.00 is actually $20.98?
I know you meant the post to be amusing–but see how quickly it became evidence for The Cause? Maybe the real culprit with the Verizon example is poor business management, rather than math deficiencies…
You seldom see the “cent” sign used any more– in my 7th grade math class, doing problems using money, we were relentless about reinforcing the base-ten monetary connection (after all, we’re still stuck with feet and inches, so dollars and cents are a pedagogical relief)–all fractions of the dollar were always $ point-something. In that regard, the use of the cent sign may have been something like interpreting a foreign symbol for the hapless Verizon employee.
In the bottom example, the way the sign is laid out and written makes me think that whoever was selling, ummm, exo force sentai fortrs, was writing in a non-native language…the relative size of the type face, the incorrect use of the negative sign, and so on. Reminds me of traveling in South Korea, visiting a maternity hospital with a group of American adoptive parents. The hospital distributed a pamphlet describing the excellent care given to mothers who relinquish their infants for adoption immediately after birth, including “childbed calisthentics.” We were all chuckling over that one–childbirth exercises?–when someone pointed out that not a single one of us could speak Korean or write in hangul.
Jeez Louise. The problem with the gas station sign is that the statement is a double negative. By “saving” a negative amount of money you are in fact paying more! 19.98 – (-49) = 68.98. The sign is off by a dollar. Not to mention the clearance products have been marked up 49 dollars LOL. That Verizon one is mind boggling. I’m going to play that in class as a real world example emphasizing the importance of basic math comprehension.