Innumeracy

The three-year old was going on and on yesterday about the cookies she'd gotten at her day care.

"It was orange and yellow and had small green things on it," she enthused.

"Did you get some for me?," I asked.

"No," she said sternly, "when Appa is two years old and I am thirty five, then you can get a cookie".

I went to the post office near my building last week. Because the post office is on campus, the worker (she looked like a temporary worker) was probably a college student. The mailing charge came out to $4.60.  I gave her $10.10.  "Umm ...," she said hesitantly, "I don't know how to do this." "You need to give me $5.50 back," I told her and  she was happy to oblige.  Shouldn't she have been able to do that?

3 comments:

  1. Is there a connection between the two incidents that I missed or they just two isolated events?

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  2. The title ties them both together. Symptoms of the same problem. Except that a 3-year old is allowed (I think) to be innumerate but a 19-year old college student is not.

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  3. Ah!. I mistook "when Appa is two years old and I am thirty five, then you can get a cookie to mean "ain't gonna happen!"

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