Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Mathematical Musings


I've never liked math or been especially good at it and recently I've discovered that there are lots of types of math that I also do not like and am inept at working through.

Airport Math (also known sometimes as Time Zone Math)
This isn't that difficult but when you've been flying all night across the country it becomes a bit more challenging. However, I did observe others having a lot more trouble with this math than I, while studying their boarding passes and wondering aloud if the time difference was already calculated into the arrival time. It is people, it is. The airlines take into account the stupidity of the masses and do this math. It is the one thing for which they can be trusted to complete successfully.

Hospital Math
My niece is in the NICU until she gains enough weight for heart surgery. They measure her weight in grams. They measure her nutrition intake in 'cc's'. They do not convert these measurements for those of us who have not embraced the metric system. It's unfortunate that this is the case because hospitals usually mean crisis and levels of emotional distress. Math is the last thing anyone wants to do.

Misc. Math
Of course there's the usual stuff, Tip Math, Checkbook Math and the ever popular Leap Year Math. But I don't really have much to say about any of those. I carry a tip card, bank online and since my birthday isn't on February 29th, it's May 17th, Leap Year doesn't concern me.