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[guest]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/08/scratchcard_anarchy/

A small quote :

"Among these was Levenshulme's Tina Farrel, a 23-year-old who admitted "she had left school without a maths GCSE". She explained: "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't.

"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher, not lower, than -8, but I'm not having it."

Are people truly this stupid? The "woman in the shop" seems to be - surely people can't think -7 is lower than -8 on a temperature scale can they?

* rizla shakes his head in disbelief

[guest]

I've just asked our kids the same question and they said the same as her. The eldest one has just had confirmation she's off on a weekend residential for "gifted and talented children" too 

[fudgem]

They actually ran a poll on this on the MSE forum, and 8 people managed to get it wrong.

There's a lot of it about

[guest]

I can (sort of) understand people getting confused with negative numbers but its a thermometer reading we're talking about. Surely people can work out that the bigger the number after the minus sign, the lower the temperature is?

Then again I did once (I worked as a chef once upon a time) see a maintenance guy argue that the freezer was safer for storing food at -10C because it was lower than -18C. He got short shrift I can tell you

As you say there's a lot of it about

[Accordion]

If anyone is struggling, they should think of their bank account - overdrawn.

They'll soon figure out which is the lower figure then!

[kitz]

* kitz shakes head

[Floydoid]

"she had left school without a maths GCSE".

What's that got to do with it?

[dave.m]

Called in  a pub a couple of weeks ago with three mates and I ordered four pints of bitter. The pretty little bimbo who served me promptly said "Eight fifty!" whilst she was still pulling the beer.
I said, "Can't be. You must be mistaken!"
"Huh! What makes you say that?" she asked.
"We did away with half pence coins a long time ago. Now will you please use the till as you do not seem capable of doing mental arithmatic."
"Who are you calling 'mental'? Oh! Sorry, it's eight forty."

I always remember doing the 'times tables' parrot fashion until we were blue in the face but, it has now become a badge of old age to be capable of doing mental arithmatic. Sad isn't it? 

dave

[mr_chris]

"she had left school without a maths GCSE".

What's that got to do with it?

It's because it's numbers, and related to maths. Something for the journalist to try and add weight with!

[guest]

This is true :

When our eldest daughter was on year 5 we got fed up with the nonsense arithmetic teaching schemes they seem to use at random. So we taught her times tables parrot-fashion. We had to do it three times over the course of a year as they simply weren't being taught the basics so she forgot them.

She has been described since then (by more than one teacher) as having a "superb mental maths brain" or similar.

The only reason she was described in that way is because she could do multiplication and division in her head. Why? She knew her times tables.

[mr_chris]

Yep.. I know, my mum did a similar thing with me when I was young. Education today seems to be less concentrating on the content of what they are actually teaching, and more on making sure the child isn't bored in the lesson. Consequently you end up having to draw posters in English exams, etc... Grr

[guest]

What finally made me snap was when I realised they were trying to teach children division before they could do multiplication properly.

It is more to do with child-minding than education in many areas I reckon.