First, some really cool news on the Sonlight website front:
1. We now have a new Cart at Sonlight.com. Hop on over there and look in the upper right corner of the window. There's an awesome "View Cart" button that pops out from the side. How cool is that?
Pretty cool.
2. We've extended our free Live Chat hours! That means that you can get help from a Customer Relations representative until 7pm Mountain Time. How cool is that? Well, to loosely borrow from the kid in The Incredibles:
On to MathTacular:
"What percent of ½ is an eighth?" Easy, but just in case you're a little rusty, I'll break it out for you:
x * ½ = ⅛ (divide both sides by ½)
x = ⅛/½ (solve division of fractions by flipping and multiplying*)
x = ⅛ * 2/1 -> x = ¼ -> x = 0.25 (multiply by 100 to get a %)
x = 25%
But then we turned it into a word problem:
"What percentage of half the income of the farm (which is how much is used to pay wages) is paid to one of the eight farm hands?"
Working out the numbers we naturally get 25% again... but wait, there are 8 guys, so how could any of them get ¼ of the money?
...umm...
cipherin'
No matter how I worked it, I couldn't get it to make sense. I ended up with things like:
x% = 1/400% workers
$1 * $8 = ⅛
and my personal favorite: x% * ½y = ⅛
But if I stuck with just the numbers, I got 25% every time.
I know it has something to do with how we're saying the problem, but I can't figure it out. And I don't often get this stumped. I mean, especially when I understand the math--I can solve the numbers in a flash--but for some reason the moment I add in the units the whole thing falls apart.
And I'm still stumped.
But I know the moment someone shows me where I've got it wrong everything will be clear. At the moment, however, I have killed math. Math is dead.
Speaking of fun numbers and death, today, for a moment, it was 04:05:06 07/08/09... which, I'm pretty sure, will not happen again for another hundred years in 2109. At which point, I will likely be dead.
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Expectant Father
*Proof: Solve for ⅛/½
We can multiply both the top and the bottom by 1 and the answer will remain the same: ⅛/½ * 1/1 = ⅛/½. But any number over itself is still just 1.So, we can have 2/2 = 1
Multiply both the top and the bottom by that
⅛/½ * 2/2 -> (⅛ * 2)/(½ *2) -> (⅛ * 2)/1 and that is just:
⅛ * 2
[…] you to everyone here and on Facebook who helped me figure out that math issue yesterday. I knew that was what was wrong but I couldn't get my head around it. Y'all are the […]
Heather, I love it when you can actually see the changes on the site. And congratulations on your upcoming Heirloom status, and new MathTacular3 DVD.
~Luke
Oooh, that shopping cart pop out thingy is so cool! It must have been added between the time I put my current to order things in my cart and when I read this today. One more week and we'll have enough saved to make another order. My order will give me both heirloom status and a replacement for the MathTacular 3 that Fritz broke.
Mrs. C, I totally drew a pie and it didn't help with trying to solve the word problem because I didn't set it up right--hence my confusion. But, yes, drawing a pie totally helped when I was doing it right <smile>.
Mamadala, right you are! The problem was that with how the word problem was set up--and my mind stuck on the other equation--I couldn't get my mind to decode the word problem correctly. Thanks for helping me look at it right <smile>.
Tammy, you are most welcome ...I think <smile>.
~Luke
Thank you for killing math for me...LOL! You've made my day!
Blessings,
Tammy ~@~
You need to define x.
if x is your answer (the percentage of the WHOLE that is paid to each worker), your equation is:
x=(1/8)*(1/2)
x=1/16
x=6.25% (of the WHOLE)
(Reverse to see that if you pay 6.25% times 8 workers, you end up paying 50%)
Um, I just drew a pie in my head and came up with an answer.
Draw a pie, Luke.