Soroban
Posts:
278
Registered:
12/6/04
|
|
Great story!
Posted:
Jun 2, 2003 4:46 PM
|
|
Hello, Aart!
That was a great story. Thank you.
I had similar experiences with my father, an immigrant from Japan
who ran a gift shop in a summer resort.
When I became a math major, I spent my summers working in the family
store. An invoice had an item at $50 per gross. While I was trying
to estimate its unit price, my father said, "About 35 cents."
I said something like "Huh? What? How...?"
He said, "Multiply by 7."
I did some scribbling (this was in 1962 B.C., before calculators)
and sure enough: 1/144 = 0.006944444 ~ 0.007
I said, "So we multiply by 7 and point off 3 places to the left."
He said, "No, you can SEE where the decimal point goes, can't you?
If it was $50 for a hundred, they'd be 50 cents each. For 144,
it's a bit less."
I'm retired now, having retired from 38 years of teaching college-
level math. And I still blush over that incident.
|
|
