Tag Archives: innumeracy

The Lighter Side of Innumeracy

Scanning a QR Code may still work!Scanning a QR Code may still work! From: Scott Stratten’s “QR Codes Kill Kittens

Most of us may not admit it, but we’ve all fallen victim to the lure of innumeracy—the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy—consciously or unconsciously. Here are twenty of my favorite innumerate events I often witness among my numerate and semi-numerate friends, colleagues, and relatives.

• Taking a 45-minute train journey to save a few dollars at Carrefour or Walmart.

• Lining up for hours (or even days, if you’re in China?) to buy an iPhone or iPad.

• Paying a numerologist or geomancy crank to divine your “lucky” and “unlucky” days.

The Largest Four-Digit NumberWhat is the smallest and the largest four-digit number?

• Visiting a feng-shui master to offer advice how best to arrange your furniture at home, or in your office, to ward off negative or “unwanted energies.”

• Buying similar items in bulk at discounted prices, which you don’t need but because they’re cheap.

• Offering foods to idols [aka gods and goddesses] in the hope that they’ll bring you good luck and prosperity in return.

• Offering gifts to hungry [angry?] ghosts to appease them lest they come back to harm you and your loved ones.

• Buying insurance policies against alien abduction, meteorites, biological warfare, or the enslavement of the apocalyptic Beast.

• Filling up lucky draw vouchers, by providing your personal particulars for future pests-marketeers and time-sharing consultants.

The Hello Kitty Syndrome in SingaporeThe Hello Kitty Syndrome in Singapore—Purchase of no more than four sets per customer will start past midnight!

• Betting on horses, football, stocks, and the like—any get-rich activities that may cut short a 30-year working life, slaving for your mean or half-ethical bosses 9-to-6 every day.

• Buying lottery tickets to short-circuiting hard work, or to retiring prematurely.

• Going on annual pilgrimages to seeking blessing from some deities, prophets, saints, or animal spirits.

• Outsourcing your thinking to self-help gurus or motivational coaches.

• Going for prices that end in 99 cents, or acquiring auctioned items that are priced at $88 or $888—the number 8 is deemed auspicious among superstitious Chinese.

Always give more than 100%!An NIE motto to innumerate undergrads: “Always give more than 100%!”

• Replying to spam mails from conmen and “widows” from Nigeria, Russia, or China, who are exceedingly generous to transfer half of their inherited money to your bank account.

• Taking a half-day leave from work, or faking sickness to visit the doctor, to line up for hours to buy McDonald Hello Kitties.

• Lining up overnight to buy the latest model of a game console, or to secure an apartment unit of a newly built condominium. 

• Enrolling for courses that cost over a thousand bucks to learn “Effective Study Habits of Highly Successful Students.”

• Postponing all important meetings, or avoiding air traveling, on a Friday the thirteenth

• Canceling all major business dealings, weddings, or product launches during the Ghost (or Seventh) Month.

Now is your turn to share with the mathematical brethren at least half a dozen of your pet innumerate activities—those numerical idiocies or idiosyncrasies— that you (or your loved ones) were indulged in at some not-too-distant point in the past.

© Yan Kow Cheong, November 10, 2014.

Big numbers do lie!Big numbers tend to lie better! (© Scott Stratten)

Some Fun with Stewart Francis’s Puns

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In my formative years, I don’t recall any elementary school teachers sharing some mathematical puns with us. I suppose that the arithmetic of yesteryear was often taught in the most uninteresting way by many who probably didn’t look forward to teaching it to a bunch of noisy kids.

Recently, while reading Stewart Francis’s Pun direction: Over 500 of his greatest gags…and four crap ones!,  I came across a number of numerical puns that might even be appreciated by some nerdy seven-year-olds. Stewart Francis is considered to be the best Canadian comedian from Southern Ontario. Here are two dozen odd math-related puns I’ve stolen from his punny book. Hope you enjoy them!

The number of twins being born has doubled.

They also stole my calculator,
which doesn’t add up.

Four out of ten people are used in surveys. Six are not.

Crime in lifts is on the rise.

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“QED Gravestone Small Poster” www.cafepress.com

I recently overcame my fear of calculators
It was a twelve-step program.

Women are attracted to foreign men. I’ve heard that at least uno, dos, tres times.

All seventeen of my doctors say I have an addictive personality.

There’s a slim chance my sister’s anorexic.

Truthfully, we met at a chess match, where she made the first move.

Is my wife dissatisfied with my body? A tiny part of me says yes.

I read that ten out of two people are dyslexic.

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From: wherethepunis.com

They now have a website for stutterers, it’s
wwwdotwwwdotwwwdotwwwdotdotdot.

I have mixed race parents, my father prefers the 100 metres.

I’m the youngest of three, my parents are both older.

Clichés are a dime a dozen.

I’m an underachiever 24-6.

I used to recycle calendars.
Those were the days.

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www.cafepress.com

I’ve learned two things in life.
The second, is to never cut corners.

‘Any man who lives his life in accordance to a book is a fool.’
Luke 317

I can say ‘No one likes a show off’ in forty-three languages.

I was once late because of
high-fiving a centipede.

Of the twenty-seven
students in my maths class,
I was the only one who failed.
What are the odds of that, one
in a million?

I’ve met some cynical people
in my twenty-eight years.

I was good at history.
Wait a minute, no, no I wasn’t.

I was terrible at school. I failed
maths so many times, I can’t even
count.

Reference
Francis, S. (2913). Pun direction: Over 500 of his greatest gags…and four crap ones! London: Headline Publishing Group.

© Yan Kow Cheong, March 19, 2014.

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