< rant >
I've been reading tour books about China and Japan and either it is just the books or people need a lesson on estimation (from what I remember of the other members of the Italy tour (pre-euro), it's not just the books)! Yes, I realize that the readers of this blog are a quite educated group and probably don't need this lesson, but this is my only forum for posting stuff like this so here it goes...
First off - going between celsius and fahrenheit (some of the credit for the following goes to one of my family members - I think my dad, but I don't remember) telling people to multiply by 9/5 and add 32 may be an attempt to improve American's mental math abilities, but is pretty darn silly when talking about the weather. Let's say that when you are discussing the weather you're typically talking about somewhere between 0 F and 100 F. If instead of taking a celsius value and multiplying by 9/5 and adding 32 you multiply by 2 and add 30 you will at most be off by 5.6 F at either end (I don't think you'll do anything different if it is -5.6 F vs 0 F or 105.6 F vs 100 F). For a more typical temperature like 70 F you'll only be off by 2 F. And if the temperature is outside the range 0 F to 100 F then the estimation is even easier - either too cold or too hot.
Next - exchange rates. If you are making major purchases or have just enough money then go ahead and use the exact exchange rate. However, if the exchange rate is 95 to 1 go ahead and divide by 100! (That's 100 said as an exclamation, not 100 factorial, that would be a horrible estimation.) Even if the exchange rate is say 8 to 1 for minor purchases decide if you want to over or under estimate and divide by either 5 or 10. It's a little off, but you'll act like a normal person instead of adding yet another barrier to communication (plus when you screw up dividing by 95 or even 8 you'll be a lot further off than if you had just estimated). For those headed to Europe I would say make life easy on yourself and say 1 euro = 1 dollar (again, if making a big purchase than take the time to do the calculation).
< /rant >
1 comment:
I just had to let you know that your parenthesis about 100! being an exclamation rather than a factorial was just about the funniest thing I've seen in a long time :)
One thing I like to do with currency exchange is that when the yen is weaker, I think 100 to 100, and then at the end of the day I justify all the spending by thinking, "oh, but it's actually less, so I saved soo much $!". But anyway enough silliness.
I'll be writing you more later about Nihon!
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