From the ES:
Almost 80% of Britons are incapable of roughly dividing £9bn by 71m, according to a new poll that shows that most people can't do rough mental arithmetic that shows a troubling state of mathematics.
A Guardian/ICM poll showed that 78% of voters believed the Olympics "were probably costing me about the same as a box of Milk Tray", as compared with just 20% who had done the sums and knew that they were actually spending at least half their family's mortgage to get exactly what they would have got if Paris had hosted them.
Once I dipt into the future
13 hours ago
14 comments:
I may have missed it in the small print, but in all the thank you's of the athletes ( for financing their hobby's) , the volunteers, Lord (creaming it in ) Coe .
Nobody ever, ever said thank you to the tax payer for funding it. London taxpayers most of all who have had an Olympic surcharge added to their council tax bill for several years, and got a visit from the torch for their cash. (no taxation with out representation, yeah right) I haven't heard Boris say that levy is going to be lifted any time soon.
What's more worrying is the situation of our politicians being just as incapable of simple maths.
Hmm. Nine thousand million*, divided by seventy million. same as nine thousand divided by seventy. same as nine hundred divided by seven. That's about £130. Per person. Maybe £400 - £500 per household. Correct? If so, where does "half their family's mortgage" come from? Monthly payment?
Not arguing that people may have grossly underestimated what they will have had to pay.
*Not nine million million, nowadays, right?
The Olympics cost £9 billion?
Bugger it, so I've missed New Year's and the January sales and gone straight to 1/4/13?
Mind you, I am reassured. I bought my house for £130,000 29 years ago and now I realise that's all it's cost me. Thank God for that.
I was a bit worried about the mortgage and all that...
I make that about £120 each, but there again, I would have divided £13 billion by 62 million, which is nearer £200 each.
Will Williams,
Yes, it's half the month's mortgage, or as an alternative, an XBox 360 and a load of games, a new TV, a weekend away in a rented house.
It's what I ask people "would you rather have watched the Olympics from Paris or have dinner with your wife at Le Manoir". Focusses the mind on what they paid for better than using numbers in billions.
People seem to have no idea of orders of costs. This makes them liable to focus on little things and ignore huge ones like there is a Black Hole sucking up most of their savings and worry about a bit of welfare scrounging. They do it with their personal expenditure too - the kind of people who go round switching lights off but leaving the electric heating on.
80 percent. Let's see now. That's four fifths or 0.8 and therefore, if it is four fifths, there is one other fifth and so add that 1 to 80 and 81 is the sum total of percentiles. Is that right?
When my kids were in primary school, they rotated through four different methods of teaching times tables. At one point, all the parents were called in to a meeting about "mental maths" (there is, or was, anyway, a mental maths test in the Y6 SATs). At this meeting, parents were warned in voices of portent and doom, of the dangers of - shock, horror - teaching children times tables AT HOME, THEMSELVES. It would all go horribly wrong.
When child number 1 still couldn't manage them properly at age 9, I spent a fortnight of bath times drilling tables up to 13. Job done. We had a similar disaster with percentages, decimals and fractions. Two evenings with a bit of A4 paper cut into 8 pieces had basically sorted that. I really don't know what goes on with maths teaching in schools (and I'm not anti-school generally - I think the curriculum and the teaching gets a worse press than it deserves when taken in the round) but I do know it's utter shite.
In son number 2's tutor group of 30, I'd say there are two, maybe three, who understand that 50% = 1/2 = 0.5. Scary.
"I haven't heard Boris say that levy is going to be lifted any time soon."
Well, of course not. Taxation is like rent: it is always set at the highest level people will pay without political consequences. Once we have been conned into paying higher taxes, that becomes the new threshold. You don't think the Gov't is going to put VAT down once "austerity" is over do you?
"People seem to have no idea of orders of costs. This makes them liable to focus on little things and ignore huge ones"
Isn't that one of Parkinson's Laws?
Jill, good work with the piece of paper, I wish I'd done that with my two earlier.
B, re VAT, no of course not, because by the time 'austerity' is over, the EU will have set the standard rate at 20% anyway and we'll be stuck with it.
We''l be stuck with it not because of the EU, but because the gov't now know that the people will pay 20% VAT without any sort of threat of a bloodbath at the polls. Stand by for further VAT rises in future, probably using the John Major technique of cutting non-stealth taxes like Council Tax at the same time.
B, VAT is the favourite tax of meddlers, politicians, vested interests and idiots generally.
Clock Tax, that's the answer
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