(no subject)

[pebblerocker]

The way some people think about numbers bothers me SO MUCH. I am far from a mathematical genius (I got up to fourth form) but the way some people think about probability REALLY bugs me. Today's instance: "Oh, but you don't know for sure, you're making assumptions!" when I prepare myself for something I consider 90% likely to happen - this person thinks that since the 7% and 3% possibilities COULD happen, I should hold off until I hear which outcome has befallen, or else spend equal effort on preparing for each of the three. Almost as if there aren't any probabilities other than 100% or exactly even chances.

My partner also gets on my wick by rounding off excessively loosely before calculating, along the lines of "65cm is about 50cm so three of them will take up about 1.5m", and by paying more attention to how much the price is reduced than to how much something costs. And the way he uses "more than half" and "less than half" - exactly opposite to the way I use them - has caused a few misunderstandings.

Ah well, maybe it's my brain that's the problem.

Comments

Apparently math is hard.

[feng_shui_house]

I just got commissions now for TWO fat quarters of a design I'd made specifically so you could make a nice decor pillow from it. I did NOT say in the description 'buy only Fat Quarters' because sometimes it makes more sense to buy a yard.

Two fat quarters of the type of fabric the buyer chose costs $21.00 and gives two complete motifs.
One yard of the same fabric costs $17.50 and gives four complete motifs.

Why would you pay $2.50 more to get LESS???

What makes that particularly sad is that you don't have to do any math- you use a drop down menu to select amount, and it tells you the cost before you add it to the cart.

[spiralsheep]

maybe it's my brain that's the problem

*Probably* not. ;-)

Also, the mathematics synapses of your partner's brain appear to have been possessed by a being of unfathomable evil from the dungeon dimensions. I hope the rest of him makes up for this minor failing.... ;-)

(I especially hate people trying to tell me that I shouldn't expect a result that isn't better than average when "average" means that half of [total results] are at the average or less than average, grr.)

[pebblerocker]

My way of thinking about things often is the problem so I tend to default to checking that out first, but numbers are where there really aren't equally valid other ways of looking at the situation.

My partner has many failings, from numbers to folding T-shirts the wrong way to having a limited capacity for murder mysteries. The emotional labour and housework make up for it (plus his general awesomeness).

I play games involving probability - not gambling, more like repeatedly killing the monster with a one in eleven chance of dropping the key to the hidden level, though I suppose that isn't too far off the definition of gambling. A lot of players handle probability and averages very, very badly - no, you're not guaranteed a key on the eleventh run...

[spiralsheep]

Yes, the probability that x will happen in 1,000,000 out of 11,000,000 examples is a very different concept to x certainly happening once out of every eleven examples, lol.

I suspect I also fold t-shirts the wrong way. My mother used to fold them with side tramlines but I fold them with a centre line, which isn't nearly as elegant.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, you know, all the mathemetical genetic material went to my brother.At least I use this as an excuse for my incompentence with numbers. :-) However, thanks to practial things and actually being on my own almost every day, I can deal with numbers and measures in a practical way. But don´t ask me to be logical or to try "high Maths". Sometimes I wonder, how on earth was I able to finish my secondary school. Probably the specialisation on the humanities saved me. And we had no maths at university, thanks gods!:-)