Pet peeve #253 (actually, let’s just call it #300): Estimation

Quick: How many seconds are in an hour?

(Pause to let you come up with the answer.)

Okay, you probably quickly recalled that there are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. Therefore, the number of seconds in an hour is determined by multiplying 60 x 60, which equals 3,600. That’s the correct answer, right?

Well, hold on. Remember that I said “Quick.” I would suggest there is another way to come up with an answer, and it is theoretically quicker. I do it by estimating. Let me explain. I make a mental note that there are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. But to make it easier to calculate, I round each 60 to the nearest hundred, which in this case would be 100. Thus my quick estimate of how many seconds are in an hour is 100 x 100 = 10,000.

So even though the actual answer is 3,600, I was able to come up with a reasonable guess of 10,000 by doing some simple, quick rounding. Surely you can begin to see the power of estimation.

Does this strike you as ridiculous?

Well, stay with me for a moment. Here is an actual question from an actual math worksheet assigned to my fourth-grader a few weeks ago. They were studying estimation.

846,543 – 587,018 =

I will spare you the need to do the calculations and tell you that the real answer to this subtraction problem is 259,525. But to find the answer by estimating, the “proper procedure” is to round to the nearest 100,000. So the first number rounds down to 800,000 and the second number rounds up to 600,000. So, the correct estimate of the answer is 200,000.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this astounds me. What good is estimating if your estimate is almost 60,000 off from the real answer? I’ll say it again. The real answer is 259,525, but the “correct” estimate is 200,000. Really, what’s the point? It’s like me “estimating” that there are 10,000 seconds in an hour. It’s meaningless. Not to put too fine a point on it, but according to Webster, an estimate is “an approximate calculation,” and approximate means “nearly correct or exact.” An estimate is supposed to be close to the real answer!

Sarcastic parent that I am, I tried to remember learning estimation when I was in grade school. And for the life of me, I can’t remember it. I might just be forgetting it. Or perhaps I thought it was so stupid that I’ve blocked it out of my memory. But what I do remember is this . . . brace yourself . . . I remember learning how to add and subtract really big numbers rather quickly so WE COULD GET THE RIGHT ANSWER THE FIRST TIME AND NOT HAVE TO MAKE BOGUS ESTIMATIONS!

Nevertheless, maybe I can briefly offer a more plausible alternative. Look once again at the problem I posed above. Maybe instead of teaching kids to round off to the nearest 100,000 in a situation like this, they can be taught to round off to the nearest 10,000. This would make the estimate look like this:

850,000 – 590,000 = 260,000

Now that’s a lot closer of an estimate! Of course, one might object that this would not be fast because a child would have to subtract 85 – 59 in his or her head rather quickly. That seems difficult. All I would say to that is I disagree. Instead of trying to subtract 59, just subtract 60 then add 1 back on to it. That makes it quick, and kids are capable of learning a trick like that.

Well, I’m going to estimate that a few people will not agree with my flow of thought on this matter, or wonder why it bugs me. But hey, that’s why they call them “pet peeves.”

Just my four cents worth

When I was in kindergarten, or perhaps it was first grade, school lunch cost thirty-five cents. Great deal, huh? With the start of a new school year recently, I found out that lunch at my son’s elementary school is $1.90, and according to him, “it’s not enough food.” Now, this comment did not surprise me at first, since, theoretically speaking, there was never enough food in the known universe for my older son (now in college), and my younger one is catching up rapidly. But upon clarification, I found out that the standard lunch at his school is four items: entrée, milk, and two sides. I can specifically remember that when I was in school, the standard lunch was five items. Higher cost, less food. But of course, isn’t that the case with everything these days?

The conversation got me to thinking about the cost of a single carton of milk. My son told me that it is fifty cents. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? And maybe it’s not. But hearing this gave me a flashback of an incident that happened to me in the first grade, when I was about six years old.

Back then, I typically brought my lunch to school, and bought milk at the cafeteria. And at the time, milk cost four cents. Four cents! That sounds kind of unbelievable now. Is there anything nowadays that costs four cents? But it’s true. I would bring a nickel to school in my pocket, and go home with a penny’s change.

One day, something happened that scared me to death. It was in the afternoon, and I was in the bathroom washing my hands. I froze in fear as I realized that the nickel was still in my pocket! I had taken a milk at lunchtime, and somehow forgotten to pay for it. I remember looking in the bathroom mirror trying to hold back the tears, almost in panic. What should I do?

Well, I told my teacher that I forgot to pay for my milk, and asked for permission to go back to the cafeteria. When I got there, I sheepishly walked “backstage” to the cooking area (a no-man’s land for students) to find the lunch lady. I can remember that she was surprised to see a student standing there. She asked me what I was doing, and I proceeded, nearly in tears, to tell her what happened. Pulling the nickel out of my pocket, I paid for the milk, and got my penny in change. I do recall a slight grin on the lunch lady’s face, though at the time I did not know why—this was a serious matter! But of course it must have seemed cute to see this little kid in such distress over a four cent milk.

As for me, I just breathed a huge sigh of relief. I had been envisioning the authorities bursting into my classroom to apprehend me when they found out that I was the one who had not paid for his milk. To have made things right and to return to class without the specter of trouble . . . that was a huge burden off of my young shoulders.

So, there is my “Honest Abe” story. It wasn’t a twelve mile trek in the snow to repay a penny to a poor old widow, but hey, nothing is as dramatic as it used to be.

And finally, this little jog down memory lane got me to thinking. With all of this inflation, have you ever noticed that the phrase “just my two cents worth” has never changed over the years? Somehow it has not “gone up in price” like everything else in our economy has. So, in honor of my four cent milk memory, and in recognition that it is time to raise the cost of this saying, and because I fancy myself a cultural trend-setter in inconsequential matters, I am going to start using the expression “just my four cents worth” instead of “two cents worth” in every day conversation. We’ll see if it catches on. Won’t you join me?

March madness

So, during my brief blogging break, my wife and I took our eight-year old son to see the Harlem Globetrotters. They were making a two-day appearance in Norfolk, Virginia, at the basketball arena at Old Dominion University. They were, of course, playing the Washington Generals, who, according to the five dollar program, had assembled a high caliber team specifically for the purpose of defeating the vaunted Globetrotters. I, of course, was therefore expecting to see the 2008 USA Olympic basketball team walk out onto the court dressed in the green and gold of the Generals. But when the Generals entered the arena, I realized that they must have been going for team chemistry over the big name players.

The game itself was a real barn-burner. The Globetrotters went out to an early lead and seemed to be dominating the action. But then the coach of the Generals was able to place one of the Globetrotters in a trance by using a spinning umbrella. Fortunately for the Generals, he was not called for a technical foul for being on the court during game play. This ruse allowed the Generals to crawl back into the game, since for a brief time, a Globetrotter was in effect playing on their side. The “spell” could only be broken if the Globetrotters made a “great play.” And they could only make a “great play” if the crowd got really loud. Ugh. Sadly, the Globetrotters fell for the umbrella trick—taken, I believe, straight from Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network—in each of the four quarters of the game.

Despite these and other shenanigans, the Globetrotters held to a comfortable double digit lead in the middle of the fourth quarter. Then, out of nowhere, the Generals stormed back and almost tied the game, frightening the you-know-what out of every child in the arena. But the Globetrotters sealed the deal with an incredible dunk in the final seconds of the game. This time it was the Globetrotters who were fortunate in not being called for a technical foul, because the player making the final dunk held onto the rim for about forty-five seconds, doing a modified gymnastics routine on the rim.

But the Globetrotters had won, and kids (and their parents) were then invited to stand in several long lines to get autographs and pictures of their heroes. I am certain that these keepsakes will end up occupying a cherished place under these children’s beds, right next to their Pokemon cards, the missing styluses to their DS’s, and several dust bunnies.

My Globetrotters experience, quite naturally, left me pondering a few things. First, I remember watching the Globetrotters as a kid on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. But it seemed like the tricks were a lot more spectacular back then as compared to what I saw now. Obviously, this is due to the fact that I was a kid then. But I think there is another factor involved. These days, we are saturated with breath-taking, monstrous dunks. On any given day during basketball season, ESPN shows highlights of many incredible plays. I’m not taking anything away from the great skills of the Globetrotters . . . many of their dribbling and passing routines were amazing. But with the arrival of players like Julius Erving, Michael Jordan, and nowadays LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, the play of the Globetrotters seems a little less spectacular.

My second observation is that, like almost anything else in the entertainment industry these days, the Globetrotters are a marketing machine. You can purchase a Globetrotters basketball for twenty-five bucks (you can, I didn’t). Or a Globetrotters jersey for who knows how much. If parents aren’t careful, they can end up laying out a good chunk of change at such events. In addition to this, I was surprised, while checking out the Globetrotters website beforehand, that there are actually two Globetrotter teams touring simultaneously. I was momentarily incensed that the Globetrotters were actually in Arizona on the day of our game, thinking that our show had been cancelled. But as I read further, I realized that this was the other Globetrotter team, strategically placed on the west coast, I presume, to avoid any unintended encounters with our Globetrotters. That could be embarrassing. At any rate, there are two teams. Twice the fun. Twice the revenue. And trotting the globe twice as fast.

We did end up having a very good family outing, and I made it out of the arena without going bankrupt. In fact, probably the biggest surprise of the day—from a Dad’s perspective—is that there was no charge for parking for the event! That little freebee had me whistling “Sweet Georgia Brown” all the way home!

Another thing you may not have known about me

First of all, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who has been reading my blog so far. I appreciate all of the kind comments. I guess many of you found out some things about me that you didn’t know before. Also, this was the first time that I have ever sat down and written out the entire story, so in a sense I was reliving a lot of it, and it was very emotional for me.

So, I thought this might be a good time to share something else that you might not know about me. You see, several years ago, I was diagnosed with a condition known as SPS, or, Sarcastic Parent Syndrome. SPS affects over 10 million adults in the United States alone, and is quickly spreading to other areas of the world. Left untreated, it can actually cause complications to a victim’s loved ones. One such complication is RES, or Rolling Eye Syndrome. RES has been contracted mostly by spouses and children of those who suffer from SPS, and is also spreading rapidly. RES is characterized by an incessant rolling of the eyes whenever someone with SPS speaks.

But there is good news. Scientists and doctors are now identifying many of the signs associated with SPS. While there is no known cure, experts hope that awareness of the warning signs might be of help to those in high risk categories. Here are a few of the warning signs for SPS:

1. You can’t understand why you pay taxes to support your local school, yet you still have to send in a whole bunch of supplies, to include tissues. Also, why do you have to send in tennis balls so that there will be one under every leg of every chair in the elementary school?

2. You do not understand why your child has 23 parties a year in school, many of them to celebrate holidays and occasions that appear to be made-up.

3. You marvel that there is a whole bunch of “new” knowledge that wasn’t around when you were a kid. For instance, did you know that there is now a Southern Ocean? It’s down around Antarctica. I just found this out from my third grader (Matthew). When I was a kid, there were four oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic. Apparently, this fifth ocean appeared while I was on vacation or something. Oh, and by the way, in case you were not aware, there are now four states of matter, not just three: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Although, my guess is that it will eventually go back to three as LCD and LED sets get more popular.

4. You wonder why there are so many syndromes and disorders that kids have these days that were not around when you were a kid. Don’t get me wrong. I am very happy that certain conditions are being identified and treatments developed. But, when you were a kid, the only syndrome was something called MAYGASS, or, “Misbehave-and-you’ll-get-a-spanking syndrome.” I struggled with that one for years.

5. You are mortified that you live in a world where children can actually be allergic to peanut butter, which, when you were growing up, was the one and only food group.

There is so much more to learn about SPS. Scientists are discovering more signs every day through experiments with laboratory mice. Only over time will we be able to grasp the full nature of SPS, and hopefully find a cure.

In the meantime, there is a desperate need for further awareness. As far as I know, there is as yet no national spokesperson for SPS. I am thinking of volunteering. That way you can send your generous donations directly to me. Trust me, I will use the money to make sure that all the little children of the world have tennis balls for their chairs. That way, SPS sufferers will have one less thing to be sarcastic about, and they’ll be able to sleep better at night. I just want to do my part.