Is arithmetic really that hard?
Ok, I'm a bit unusual. I do most math and arithemetic in my head, and, partially because of this, whenever I see figures I tend to double check them.
There's a lot of subtleties which anyone could miss, but I thought this one was pretty obvious. Here's the article. Apparently congress has, surprise, surprise, voted themselves a pay raise this year of 4.1%.
"Members of Congress, along with more than 1 million other civilian government workers, are in line for a 4.1 percent pay raise next year under legislation moving through the House Thursday."
Ok, the article then goes on with
"It would boost salaries for representatives and senators to about $158,000 a year from the present $154,700."
Now, I could get out a calculator, or even do complicated math in my head, but even just eyeballing this briefly shoudl tell you there's something off here. Clearly, if you make over $100,000/year, 1% of your salary is going to be over $1,000. If you have over 4% then that has to be over $4,000. Add over $4,000 to $154,700 and you get over $158,700.
Now, under the theory that "math is hard" any numbskull with a computer (and, let's face it, if you got the article to the internet you had to have a computer) can open up a calculator app, plug in the initial salary, multiply it by 1.041, from which we get... $161042.70.
Now, if they'd said it was around $161,000 I'd have no problems with it, but clearly this is not about $158,000, unless either you've made a big math error or you're trying to deliberately mislead someone.
By the way, that's CNN. I'd have expected better then that from them. These aren't some little side numbers buried in the article, these are the numbers the whole article is about. The number they sited for final salaries would be "about" a 2.1% pay increase.
There's a lot of subtleties which anyone could miss, but I thought this one was pretty obvious. Here's the article. Apparently congress has, surprise, surprise, voted themselves a pay raise this year of 4.1%.
"Members of Congress, along with more than 1 million other civilian government workers, are in line for a 4.1 percent pay raise next year under legislation moving through the House Thursday."
Ok, the article then goes on with
"It would boost salaries for representatives and senators to about $158,000 a year from the present $154,700."
Now, I could get out a calculator, or even do complicated math in my head, but even just eyeballing this briefly shoudl tell you there's something off here. Clearly, if you make over $100,000/year, 1% of your salary is going to be over $1,000. If you have over 4% then that has to be over $4,000. Add over $4,000 to $154,700 and you get over $158,700.
Now, under the theory that "math is hard" any numbskull with a computer (and, let's face it, if you got the article to the internet you had to have a computer) can open up a calculator app, plug in the initial salary, multiply it by 1.041, from which we get... $161042.70.
Now, if they'd said it was around $161,000 I'd have no problems with it, but clearly this is not about $158,000, unless either you've made a big math error or you're trying to deliberately mislead someone.
By the way, that's CNN. I'd have expected better then that from them. These aren't some little side numbers buried in the article, these are the numbers the whole article is about. The number they sited for final salaries would be "about" a 2.1% pay increase.