Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Math Errors Abound

One of the entertaining pamphlets given to me at the Cancun airport was the brochure for all the goodies I could buy at the duty-free shops there. But as I was trying to savor the thoughts of all the tequila, Grey Goose, Lucky Strike, Ray Bans, and perfumes I could buy--duty free!--a horrible thought struck me: math incompetence isn't solely the domain of Americans.


Every page, it was the same.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

C'mon Darren, you're going to complain about rounding !?!

You save almost 19% on each bottle of Gray Goose Vodka (14/74 ~=19%). Round up to 20% per bottle. Buy two bottles and you save 40%.

Duh!

:-)

-Mark Roulo

Darren said...

Ouch, that was painful!

How can you explain the Bombay gin?

Anonymous said...

their country was more concerned with banning trans fats than planing a budget....thus firing many country workers...including math teachers...

....hows that?

Anonymous said...

"How can you explain the Bombay gin?"

Ah ... the Bombay Gin ... yes.

Well ... note carefully that it doesn't say, "Save 50%." It says, "50% save." From this we can conclude that only 1/2 of the people who read the ad actually take advantage of the discounted Bombay Gin.

Yeah ... that's it.

-Mark Roulo

Anonymous said...

Isnt the US flag there to tell you that you save 50% compared to the RRP in the US?

Anonymous said...

"Isnt the US flag there to tell you that you save 50% compared to the RRP in the US?"

How does this harass Darren? :-)

In any event, I can get 750ml of Bombay Sapphire for $18.99 at K&L wine merchants, so unless the duty free people went looking for expensive Gin (and they may have), this isn't even close to 50% off the US price.

The same holds true for the Gray Goose Vodka. 1L goes for $34.99 at ShopRite Wines & Liquors in New Jersey, so 2 for $60 isn't *that* much of a bargain.

For what it is worth, I've never understood duty free ...

-Mark Roulo

Anonymous said...

On the left, maybe they're talking about two bottles for 60 instead of only one? Still might not be 40% -- I'm too lazy. The right one is totally off, though. Wow.