Ah, Irony...

[robinbloke]

"Our research found 60% of customers don't understand percentages so it's extremely challenging to shop in the store in an informed manner," says Beth Flower, nutrition and health manager at Sainsbury's."

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

They teach percentages in school still, why do people not understand them? They're not very complicated. Maybe the same people who didn't understand it in the first place didn't have a good enough diet to be able to pay attention in maths lessons.

[omentide.livejournal.com]

I once had to explain percentages to a Consultant Cardiologist in the middle of a high level meeting. He couldn't understand that the percentage got smaller as the denominator got bigger.

I'm not sure about his diet, but I am fairly sure that he spent many, many years in various institutes of learning.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

:o
I am going to start taking some exercise really, really soon, and never take up smoking, and try and reduce my stress levels. Yeek.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

My foster brother got very confused by percentages due to bad teaching, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens to lots of other people. To whit:

"We're going to learn about 10% first, because that's easy. To find 10% you divide by 10"

He gets all the 10% questions right, and then follows the pattern he has been taught, dividing by 20 to get 20%, by 40 to get 40%, etc...

What I found more depressing was that the teacher had just marked his answers wrong, instead of noticing what the problem was.

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

Erm, surely the denominator's contant in a percentage?

[omentide.livejournal.com]

Well, they were percentages of different things.

It was a few years back but these X cases were Y percent of one population and <y percent of a second population which was bigger.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

That's an almost unbelievably stupid way to teach...poor kid!

[ebb.livejournal.com]

Very amusing... Beth obviously doesn't get the irony of what she's just said, that or she did it in an inspired moment of 'mock the media'.