GG and CD shop clerks

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

>He got very flustered when we told him. He tried it again. Still wrong,
>still the wrong direction.
>Finally he excused himself for about twenty minutes. He'd gone upstairs
>to the computer department and had someone put the problem to some
>software in the bank computer. It came back pretty much right this time.
>He said they'd had to ask the program to compute it three times, one
>year at a time -- nobody could figure out how to do it directly over
>the whole three years. It differed by maybe a dollar or two from our
>computations -- but at least in our direction for a change, we didn't
>quibble.

The dollar or two was your compensation for the time out of your day.

But NOBODY at the bank could figure that out in 20 minutes, and it's the
kind of thing they need to do every day?  What...8% over 3 years, that's
1.08^3 * P.  How hard is that for a chunk of meat with a coupla eyes
who's getting paid to know it?

Even easier on a slide rule, just take 1.08, doink it over to the right
three times, doink doink doink, and read the answer under the principal.
Gyoll.  Heck, since it's a cube, don't even need to doink it at all, just
read 1.26 straight off the K scale and multiply it by P.

Less than a minute by either method.

>Don't be so blue. Look at it this way ... soon, if not already, anyone
>who CAN divide by 4 accurately will be able to pull in U$125,000 a year
>as a bank vice-president or an insurance company actuary, or someone with
>the responsibility of preventing airplanes from crashing into one another.

And there's the reason why a Glenn Gould would be afraid of flying.  "The
computer says your angle of descent is 25% too steep.  25 is too hard to
calculate.  Too hard!  How much is that in degrees?  I guess it must mean
25 degrees, but it doesn't say Celsius or Fahrenheit.  This is too hard.
Let me run it through the computer three more times.  Pull up 80 degrees
Fahrenheit.  Oh noooooooooo......!"


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot