Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I agree completely.

The amount of college educated people that do not now how to calculate a tip in their head is terrifying.

I can understand not being able to get 17.5% down to the penny. But 10%, 15% or 20% can be calculated in your head faster than I can get my phone out. This level of math is pretty basic.

Its also worth saying that I was never described as a "math person". The number of people that will blindly accept what the calculator tells them is too fucking high.

I have already noticed far too many people using chatGPT as a source. I have a tax attorney friend who got in an argument with an agent at the CRA (Canada Revenue) over whether her interpretation of a rule was correct or whether the chatGPT interpretation was correct. Mind you, she works as a prosecuting attorney so it wasn't adversarial, it was just her saying, "sorry, I'm the legal expert, this interpretation is incorrect, and we will lose if we use this interpretation".



Working with computers I mentally use a hybrid of BCD and binary arithmetic. e.g. for the 17.5%, I mentally move the decimal point to the left, drop the cents, add half and then half of that, i.e. 10% + 5% + 2.5%




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: