Do These Daily Math Make Sense to You?

If you think that a 10% price increase this week followed by a 10% price reduction next week will bring the price back to where it started, then sooner or later you are likely to be ripped off. (The final price will be 99% of the original.)

If you think that a 50% chance of rain Saturday and a 50% chance of rain Sunday means a 100% chance of rain over the weekend, you are likely to be in for a surprise.(The correct answer is that the chance of rain over the weekend is 75%.)

If you think that a newspaper headline saying that the rate of inflation is falling means things will become less expensive, you are in for a shock when prices continue to rise. (A decrease in the inflation rate means that prices are not going up as fast as before; but they can still be going up.)

——— Mathematics Education for  a New Era Video Games as a Medium for Learning Keith Devlin