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Speaking of math

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I understand. We weren’t actually together speaking of math, but Rocky & I were, so… .

77 – 29 = 48. A 48 degree drop in temperature from yesterday afternoon to this morning. More layers!

And speaking of math– I witnessed the most amazing thing yesterday at the SuperLu. (That’s the SuperValu grocery in town but the ‘a’ and ‘l’ on the sign don’t light up anymore.) A fellow in front of me purchased something for $2.49. Total cost to him– including his $0.17 contribute to the Sovereign State of Mississippi– was $2.66. He handed the youngish woman (late 20s?) a 50 dollar bill and she promptly entered $5.00 as the amount tendered.

Typically, these sorts of mistakes would require the young cashier to reach for the PA system mic and say, “Joanne, come up front to check, please,” so that the rest of the folks in line could be dealt with as quickly as possible while the consequences of the mistake were being sorted out. Often, this would require the more senior cashier– who in this case was bagging– to herself reach for the mic and say, “Manager assistance needed on register one.”

But that’s not what happened! The young cashier looked at the screen, realized her mistake, and started out by getting four pennies out of the drawer, “seventy,” a nickel, “seventy-five,” a quarter, “three,” … “four, five… and fifty.”

She did it again as she counted it out into the fellow’s outreached hand, just to be sure, she said.

It was a beautiful sight!

3 Responses

  1. That’s how I learned to do it…and use it daily (well, up to last week) to give back change. Caught myself many times making errors by doing so! But I understand your point – it seems like everybody depends on the computers to do the figuring and nobody does math any more.
    (Like….77 – 29….. to me, that’s 79 – 29 = 50…-2 (because 77 is 79-2) = 48. Sort of new mathish…but I find playing with the numbers kind of fun. Rounding numbers up or down makes working with them mentally easier.
    Gotta do something driving around in the car!

    1. Different math & arithmetic problems have man and different optimal solution strategies. I used the same one you did for that one. But yesterday I was measuring for drapery rods and I measured in feet and was reminded that they’re sold in inches. So 11’9″ is just three inches shy of 12′ an I know, having been in a little red school house, that 12 squared is 144″. Conveniently, that’s a maximum endpoint on a size of rod.

      God. Doing things in our head. We’re old, aren’t we?

  2. Heh…and in lightbulbs, they might be measured in watts or inches…
    So…we had bulbs that were F40s that were 48 inches but were 40 watts, and F48s that were both 48 inches and 48 watts. And then you learn that they’re not _actually_48 inches, but _nominally_ 48 inches – in other words, they rounded up.

    All the time…they round up!

    But … yeah…we’re old. And I think I’m older than you are! Ah well.. There’s only one other alternative!

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