To get frustrated by bad maths being spread about?

[Slitherout]

Just saw this article www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/sainsburys-store-charges-shopper-22525-14425122.amp and without making you read the whole thing it's someone got massively overcharged for a pizza.

[b]"A supermarket blunder meant a dad-of-two was charged a whopping £225.25 for a ten-inch margherita - a shocking 200 per-cent increase on the actual price."[/b]

This annoys me far more than it should, a 200% increase would be twice as much added on surely, so being charged £7.95? The price was actually an 8500% increase wasn't it? Which by the by would have sounded far more shocking for the article.

This isn't the first time by a long way that I've seen stuff like this in articles or on TV, else I wouldn't be so riled about it honest . I find most maths, more than the basic stuff, quite hard to get my head round so aibu to think people presenting news shouldn't be making it harder by messing up the maths so frequently? No wonder so many people don't 'get' maths!

[soulrider]

It's a lie anyway, he didn't get overcharged because they noticed the error before he paid! What a non story

[Slitherout]

So they did! Didn't even notice that in my maths fury , doubly inaccurate then!

[JustPutSomeGlitterOnIt]

YANBU and it's annoying the editor didn't spot it.

[SocksRock]

We got charged £3500 for a takeaway once, and it went through on husbands credit card (over the phone). The owner was mortified, turned up with our food (which he didn’t charge us for in the end) and all the card machine slips showing he’d refunded it. I can’t even work out what percentage increase that would have been...

[TheOriginalEmu]

YANBU. in a similar vein (kinda, but not really, but it REALLY grips my shit so i want to moan) those puzzles that pop up on facebook where you have 3 algebraic type sums and you have to work out what the final answer is using BODMAS. There is a woman on my facebook who INSISTS that in a sum where X+YxZ, you don't have to do the multiplication first, 'because its not in brackets', argues this shit with me every single time it comes. AND she works in finance fur fecks sake. It boils my blood!

[kalapattar]

Only a fraction of people would agree with you, OP

[Slitherout]

Oh they make me stabby Emu, whole lists of comments from people arguing that they've got the right answer because there's no brackets, it's BODMAS not BTDWYL (Brackets Then Do What You Like)

[Slitherout]

Maybe 110% of people kalapattar?

[TheOriginalEmu]

slither ha!! indeed!! I feel sorry for the people who work for her company if she can't do basic maths!!
socks assuming it was £35 originally, thats a 9900% increase!

[BobbinThreadbare123]

It makes me stabby too. I think the pride that is taken in not knowing any maths in this country is ridiculous. I know a load of people will try to tell me I'm wrong but I never hear anyone admitting to not being good at reading or writing, yet they will happily admit they can't "do maths". Simple money, percentages and proportion are very important.

[kalapattar]

The fraction thing really annoys me. You hear it all the time. Only a fraction of people support something.

Yes - well 99/100 is a fraction.

Sometimes you hear only a tiny fraction...that's better.

[SocksRock]

Yes it was supposed to be £35. I know exactly what he did, with the extra zeros, we couldn’t believe it went through!

[goose1964]

Most of us were taaugh maths left to right unless I'm brackets, not sure where this bodmas stuff came from

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Most of us were taaugh maths left to right unless I'm brackets, not sure where this bodmas stuff came from Well, you shouldn't have been. Times and divide have always taken precedence over add and subtract. You only need brackets when you want people to do something different. So 1+23 = 7 , and if you want to do the addition first, you need to use brackets (1+2)3 = 9.

[TeenTimesTwo]

Most of us were taaugh maths left to right unless I'm brackets, not sure where this bodmas stuff came from

No you weren't. (Almost certainly, unless your maths teacher was rubbish).
I was taught BODMAS 40 years ago.
The rule of the order of operations has been around pre-1900.
It may not have been called BODMAS but it isn't new.
You've (probably) just forgotten it, in the same way people forget other stuff they were taught at school.

[Witchend]

My Mum learnt BODMAS in the 1950s and I don't think it was new then.

I saw one the other day.
"It was 50% mum's fault and 50% dad's fault and 100% the teacher's fault" or something like that. Can't even remember where that was. So 200% someone else's fault then?

[PurpleDaisies]

People don’t understand percentage change and it’s usually exploited by headline writers talking about miracle cures.

[runningoutofjuice]

It was BMDAS (Bless My Dear Aunt Sally) at my school in the 60s. Definitely not new.

[SumAndSubstance]

YANBU, but if you made the same thread about bad grammar you’d be torn apart as a nasty, spiteful snob

[DrinkReprehensibly]

I was taught BODMAS in the 90s although I don't remember giving it a name, I just remember division and multiplication before addition and subtraction. My teacher used to use fullstops as the notation for multiplication rather than x as well, I think. Managed to get an A in GCSE, so must have been right!