Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Zeroes Matter
Congress and President Bush appear to have settled on a budget. How many months did Congress stall on this basic need of our citizens? Oh, well. I have another point to make.
Many of our youth have very little concept of numbers. As stated early on, I give my college students a 50-fact multiplication test (50 seconds) to attempt to drive home the phenomenal processing speeds of computers.
Related to little exercise is a requirement that all numbers on papers include the zeroes. For example, gross sales of $46.5 billion is not allowed; it must be shown as $46,500,000,000.
Back to the US budget. A $3.1 trillion dollar budget has little impact but $3,100,000,000,000, that's another story. Maybe elected officials just might become more responsible with our money if they realized just how much of it they spend.
Many of our youth have very little concept of numbers. As stated early on, I give my college students a 50-fact multiplication test (50 seconds) to attempt to drive home the phenomenal processing speeds of computers.
Related to little exercise is a requirement that all numbers on papers include the zeroes. For example, gross sales of $46.5 billion is not allowed; it must be shown as $46,500,000,000.
Back to the US budget. A $3.1 trillion dollar budget has little impact but $3,100,000,000,000, that's another story. Maybe elected officials just might become more responsible with our money if they realized just how much of it they spend.
Labels: legislature, politics, taxes
