Re: [Phys-l] innumeracy

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

Yes, this is serious.  It implies the student(s) don't know the  
population of their city and can't extrapolate to the population of  
each larger group, city, county, state, nation, and nations.

Another point raised [The resistance to funding what we think is very  
necessary.] reminds me of the insignificance of that amount compared  
to the capitalization of their resident city.  a typical home is,  
say, $1/3 million  in a city of, say 100k there are v. ~ 20k homes.  
that's  $2/3 billion and that's a fraction of the total  
capitalization.   I think we are grossly under-taxed, especially in  
Calif.

More political:  Our "no new taxes" governor is following the  
republican strategy:  de-fund the infrastructure, so it can be  
privatized.

bc is then reminded of an Allende speech wherein he pointed out the  
foreign owners of the copper mines had removed a value of copper  
GREATER THAN THE TOTAL CAPITALIZATION OF CHILE.  That's all the  
buildings, roads, utilities, etc.  So one might not wonder why his  
government nationalized, w/ out further compensation, the copper mines.

For the lazy, but interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_nationalization_of_copper



On 2008, Feb 29, , at 10:37, Robert Cohen wrote:

> Many people have a problem interpreting large values and perhaps  
> that is
> part of what you are seeing here.
>
> I'd be more concerned with the ratios than the actual numbers  
> (although
> 800,000 for the US population seems a tad bit off the mark, even for
> me).  In particular, ten answers had ratios of ten or less.  Do they
> really think the US population is that large compared to the world
> population??  Not recognizing the ratio seems to me a bigger problem.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Robert A. Cohen, Department of Physics, East Stroudsburg University
> 570.422.3428   rcohen@po-box.esu.edu    http://www.esu.edu/~bbq
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