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High Number of Adults Unable to do Basic Mathematical Tasks

posted by mrpg on Friday March 16 2018, @12:35AM   
from the ∫-√(1+[f(x)']²)dx dept.

"exec" writes:

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

The above may seem like a rather basic question. Something that you would perhaps expect the vast majority of adults to be able to answer? Particularly if they are allowed to use a calculator.

Unfortunately, the reality is that a large number of adults across the world struggle with even such basic financial tasks (the correct answer is US$1.05, by the way).

[...] In many other countries, the situation is even worse. Four in every ten adults in places like England, Canada, Spain and the US can't make this straightforward calculation – even when they had a calculator to hand. Similarly, less than half of adults in places like Chile, Turkey and South Korea can get the right answer.

-- submitted from IRC

High number of adults unable to do basic mathematical tasks

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Original Submission

• Re:"High Number" of Adults Re:"High Number" of Adults (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 16 2018, @11:12AM (1 child)

  by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday March 16 2018, @11:12AM (#653513) Journal

  Yes, and more importantly, if you understand the history of rods, chains, and furlongs, you'll also understand why a mile is exactly 5280 feet. (It's not just a random number chosen arbitrarily.)

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• Re:"High Number" of Adults (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday March 16 2018, @03:15PM

  by meustrus (4961) on Friday March 16 2018, @03:15PM (#653623)

  Kind of disappointed nobody is actually saying what the conversions are. 1 mi = 8 furlongs, 1 furlong = 10 chains, 1 chain = 4 rods, and 1 rod = 5.5 yards. The reason for that fraction?

  At the time, the Saxons used the North German foot, which was 10 percent longer than the foot of today. When England changed to the shorter foot in the late 13th century, rods and furlongs remained unchanged, since property boundaries were already defined in rods and furlongs. The only thing that changed was the number of feet and yards in a rod or a furlong, and the number of square feet and square yards in an acre. [ref] [wikipedia.org]

  Now I'm mad that we could have had nice round 4800 ft miles if it weren't for some English king deciding to change the length of a foot [wikipedia.org].

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  If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?

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