Posted on 03/06/2020 9:55:05 PM PST by grundle
The MSNBC host and the New York Times’ Mara Gay praised a tweet with a startling — and incorrect — claim.
MSNBC’s Brian Williams plus bad math equaled an embarrassing on-air goof Thursday. (See the clip below.)
“The 11th Hour” host gushed over a tweet claiming that Michael Bloomberg could have used the $500 million ad budget on his failed presidential bid to give every American $1 million.
“It’s an incredible way of putting it,” Williams declared.
“It’s true,” guest and New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay chimed in. “It’s disturbing.”
It was also wrong.
Get your calculators out, America. Here’s the now-deleted tweet from writer Mekita Rivas that Gay brought up and Williams validated:
“Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over. I feel like a $1 million check would be life-changing for most people. Yet he wasted it all on ads and STILL LOST.”
Some quick number-punching reveals that $500 million divided by 327 million equates to a rounded-up $1.53 per person, a bit off from $1 million.
Rivas owned up to the flub, writing, “I know, I’m bad at math,” on a Twitter bio.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffpost.com ...
Right. That’s how I see it.
You also have to divide the M by the M, which cancels them out.
You don't need to waste any effort doing math.
It’s astounding and very disturbing how math-illiterate people are.
I expect it of Liberals. But I’m shocked from some of the comments here how poor some even some Freepers are.
Another point that nobody brings up is if you handed everybody a million dollars, nobody would have any greater purchasing power. The price of everything would just rise accordingly.
People are rich because of the differential in their purchasing power over the poor.
Doesn’t matter whether there’s a M or not. The answer remains the same.
If:
5.00/3.27=1.5290
Then how does one figure that 500M/327M = one dollar and fifty three cents?
I used 3rd grade Catholic School math. Remember that stuff? Common Sense Math
They believe in “science”. Or is that “seance”?
When I tutored math in college, there were no hand-held calculators except for the rich. It was paper and pencil. I also had a slide rule, so most calculations were an approximation and you kept track of the zeros or decimal point in your head. Now that calculators are available everywhere, young people don't understand the basics behind mathematics. I brought my kids up to avoid computers and calculators, and practiced them on doing math in their heads. Served them well in financial calculating.
Bro i’m So Glad you hit me up.
I did 300 million times 500 million.
Which bothers me. Because I did it for a while and it never hit me that the 500 million was supposed to a million
I guess it was just a brain funk but ever since head injury years back I get terrified at any sign of mental error.
gotta stop that.
But still, that’s a VERY ODD mistake.
Maybe it was late and I was tired.
I was wrong with the 300 million too :) didn’t know we were up to 327 million now.
thanks and have a great night
I never attended one of the catholic elite schools but I know how to cross out the zero’s and divide. Even being an under educated dumb ass it’s a dollar and fifty three cents. I can use a framing square to figure roof pitch and lay out a 16” center frame wall. The mini-mike cheap SOB didn’t give anybody crap. Brian Williams is an idiot. Period. A pre hung door header needs at 87 and 5/8 inch clearance to square it up. Just regular old Christian carpenters taught me that.
Programmed NPC’s that can’t think for themselves. Someone in authority posted it and they ran with it
I’m not surprised.
Let’s all be nice to Brian Williams.
He got shot down in a helicopter while in Iraq!
(well, in his lie, he did...)
Back to basics. Put the formula in English terms:
$500 Million Dollars divided by 327 Million People
The "Million" in the numerator (top) is cancelled out by the "Million" in the denominator (bottom) of the fraction.
What you are left with is $1.53 (dollars signified by the dollar sign) per person (signified by the "People" term).
$1.53 is a dollar and fifty-three cents.
You ansered your own question.
500 million DOLLARS divided by 300 million PEOPLE =
1.529 DOLLARS per PERSON.
1.529 DOLLARS rounds up to $1.53.
QED ( Latin for That which was to be demonstrated) (or something)
If you don’t believe me, Just ask mini-Mike for your million dollars.
Of course, he might give you two million, since Uncle Joe shot half the population with his assault rifle.
I won’t confuse you any further trying to explain how that works....
Well, when I first saw that Brian Williams had made that statement I accepted it. I’m sure I would have figured it out, but the very next sentence pointed out the error before I did.
I remember a story, possibly apocryphal, about a group of earnest do-gooding “share the wealth” advocates who visited Andrew Carnegie. They said that wealth should be evenly distributed, and it was terrible that Carnegie had so much,and others had so little.
Carnegie called his accountant and asked him “What is my net worth”, and “what is the population of the earth”. He asked the accountant to tell him what the first number was divided by the second. It came out to about 37 cents.
He told his accountant “I’m sending these men to see you. Give them each 37 cents. That’s their share of my net worth.”
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