Idiots. We're surrounded by idiots.



The guy's blog is here: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

Original full-length recording is here: http://imgs.xkcd.com/verizon_billing.mp3

At then end, when she says, "It's obviously a difference of opinion." ...there you have it. People don't recognize the principle that "What you say is supposed to mean something." In this case (Verizon math), "cents" means "dollars". It's just a difference of opinion.

OMFG!

Maybe we're not really all the same species. That could explain it. Maybe the people who think it's only a matter of opinion whether $1 = 1¢ are really the mutants, and they'll breed themselves out of existence.

Alas, it seems more likely that they're multiplying.

Man do I understand his frustration!!! I ended up dropping Verizon after 8 years because of a series of phone calls involving two separate issues. The first issue took me 6 calls and I was still unable to resolve the other took me 14 calls and that was resolved thankfully. It was still enough to make me switch.

I can't believe how calm he was on that.

Vito,

the real problem is that they don't make kids do math problems anymore without calculators. I believe i was in the last generation that never used calculators until grade 12 and then they FORCED me to buy a Texas Instruments 83 calculator.

I would have loved to invest in TI stock when they landed all of N.American schools contracts for forced graphic calculators. At $84 dollars a pop you would need a very large calculator to compute that profit margin!

A couple generations ago, Issac Asimov wrote a short story titled, "A Feeling of Power" that used the rediscovery of mathematics as its plot. How in the far future humans had utterly forgotten any and all mathematical concepts---computers ran the world's infrastructure seamlessly without interference---until a minor technician realized if you assigned symbols to quantities and experimented sufficiently, rules and patterns emerged that exactly matched the output of The Computers. (gasp!)

There was a twist at the end I won't divulge in case someone wants to read it, but the historical significance lies more in the marketing of the story at the time: Even though Asimov was a respected writer, magazine editors didn't want to buy it because they thought Man forgetting mathematics was too preposterous an idea, even for science fiction.

See what happens when 'relativitism' is the norm... If there is no absolute truth, there is no absolute wrong...its all just a matter of opinion.

I thought relativism was what you all called "dating" down south.

I have a math degree, and made it to my senior year without purchasing one. THen I took Linear Algebra which was a requirement for the class because it handled matrices.

I tried to barter with the professor, explaining I was pretty good at this math stuff, but to no avail, to be in the class I needed a TI-85.

Public education is what made TI-85, most math oriented people prefer Casio or HP (the prior for me, due to their capacity to handle fractions). Similarly, the US government made Beretta a popular firearm; I've never owned one that works.

Using dimensional analysis on this problem is akin to nuking a mosquito. It'll get the job done, but there's a simpler solution. Working with decimal places is, IIRC, a fourth or fifth grade requirement. Not only that, but converting from cents (the word itself means hundredth) to dollars and back is a daily occurrence. Any adult who can't grasp the concept that cents=/= dollars is, essentially, subliterate.
I say this as a guy who is anything but good at math.

Here is how the dude paid them: