2000 McDonald's Apple Pie? NO, its 4586 pies!!!
2000 McDonald's Apple Pie? NO, its 4586 pies!!!
You may have seen or heard from one or more sources try to explain the 700 billion bailout deal in terms of McDonalds Apple Pies. While it is technically true that 2000 McDonald's apple for each person in the US could be bought for no more than 700000000000, this figure is horribly misleading. Worse, new sources, blogs, and fake news shows keep repeating this figure without stopping to do the very simple arithmatic to see if it is the right number. If you paid 700 billion dollars 2000 pies per person, you will have over paid by roughly $394,755,163,000. I don't know about your government, but mine can't afford to waste over 394 billion dollars due to innumeracy.
Lets do this right. It won't take long, I promise. In fact, you could have easily figured this yourself in far less time than it will take you to read this post. We need to know to numbers, the population of the US and the price of McDonald's apple pies. You probably already know that McDonalds apple pies are 2 for a buck -- although the person who came up with the 2000 pie figure clearly didn't. For the population, just ask google. "US Population" will give you the answer without even clicking on a link or even reading the summary! The July 2007 estimate is just sitting there are the top, complete with the reference to the CIA world fact book. Of course if you did bother to look at the search results, you'd find that the first result gives the US Census Bureau to-the-minute population estimate (Currently 305,247,863).
700000000000 dollars / 305,247,863 people = 2293.218347609 dollars per person
2293.218347609 dollars per person * 2 pies per dollar = 4586.436695218 pies per person.
Since people don't like to get half eaten pies, we can safely round to 4586 pies per person.
My guess is that the originator of the 2000 pie figure (1) believed that the pies are $1 each, and (2) rounded 2293 down to 2000. I might forgive this mistake had my 8th grade students made it, although I still would correct them on it. However there are two wither bad choices made in addition to the first two. Does converting dollars into some product that costs a dollar really help people understand? If you really think expressing values in terms of items from a dollar or value menu, then you have been watching far too many fast food commercials. The last mistake was rounding to the nearest thousand pies. Rounding to that place value undervalued the $700000000000 by roughly $89,504,274,000 (assuming the pies really cost $1). Even for the US government, eighty-nine and a half billion dollars is a lot of money.
So please, if you write news stories for any medium (this includes you too bloggers) take two minutes to check you math, if you work for the government don't you DARE use someone else's figures without checking them. For the rest of you, correct anyone you hear repeating the 2000 pie figure.
You may have seen or heard from one or more sources try to explain the 700 billion bailout deal in terms of McDonalds Apple Pies. While it is technically true that 2000 McDonald's apple for each person in the US could be bought for no more than 700000000000, this figure is horribly misleading. Worse, new sources, blogs, and fake news shows keep repeating this figure without stopping to do the very simple arithmatic to see if it is the right number. If you paid 700 billion dollars 2000 pies per person, you will have over paid by roughly $394,755,163,000. I don't know about your government, but mine can't afford to waste over 394 billion dollars due to innumeracy.
Lets do this right. It won't take long, I promise. In fact, you could have easily figured this yourself in far less time than it will take you to read this post. We need to know to numbers, the population of the US and the price of McDonald's apple pies. You probably already know that McDonalds apple pies are 2 for a buck -- although the person who came up with the 2000 pie figure clearly didn't. For the population, just ask google. "US Population" will give you the answer without even clicking on a link or even reading the summary! The July 2007 estimate is just sitting there are the top, complete with the reference to the CIA world fact book. Of course if you did bother to look at the search results, you'd find that the first result gives the US Census Bureau to-the-minute population estimate (Currently 305,247,863).
700000000000 dollars / 305,247,863 people = 2293.218347609 dollars per person
2293.218347609 dollars per person * 2 pies per dollar = 4586.436695218 pies per person.
Since people don't like to get half eaten pies, we can safely round to 4586 pies per person.
My guess is that the originator of the 2000 pie figure (1) believed that the pies are $1 each, and (2) rounded 2293 down to 2000. I might forgive this mistake had my 8th grade students made it, although I still would correct them on it. However there are two wither bad choices made in addition to the first two. Does converting dollars into some product that costs a dollar really help people understand? If you really think expressing values in terms of items from a dollar or value menu, then you have been watching far too many fast food commercials. The last mistake was rounding to the nearest thousand pies. Rounding to that place value undervalued the $700000000000 by roughly $89,504,274,000 (assuming the pies really cost $1). Even for the US government, eighty-nine and a half billion dollars is a lot of money.
So please, if you write news stories for any medium (this includes you too bloggers) take two minutes to check you math, if you work for the government don't you DARE use someone else's figures without checking them. For the rest of you, correct anyone you hear repeating the 2000 pie figure.