9 ms·

I agree on every level, but I'm compelled to remind you this is the America where wendy's (?) had to revert to a 1/4 pounder from a 1/3 pounder bc people though

I agree on every level, but I'm compelled to remind you this is the America where wendy's (?) had to revert to a 1/4 pounder from a 1/3 pounder bc people thought they were getting less meat. And let's not forget the ever-present anti-education cohort that can't be convinced math is good even when you tell them it's how you calculate discounts or tips.

sharps1 3y ago
I had to look this up as I didn’t grow up in the States. It was A&W. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr... Crazy.
- cityofdelusion 3y ago
  This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Reportedly that’s the answer they got in focus groups when they tried to figure out why it failed. 4 > 3.
    - ckw 3y ago
      So why didn't they start selling 1/5 pounders?
      - zo1 3y ago
        Quarter and pounder rhymes so rolls off people's tongues. Fifta-Pounder? Fifth-Pounder? Five-Pounder? For all we know, marketing vetoed it cause they were lazy.
        euroderf 3y ago
        How 'bout a five-ouncer ? Or would that suffer by seeming microscopic when listed close to "32 ounce" drinks ?
  - maximus-decimus 3y ago
    I did teacher's college in Canada and the teacher who taught math said his biggest surprise when he moved from Europe to Canada is how terrible people were with fraction. I think he asked a barista to fill his cup to 2/3 and they couldn't do it because they didn't know what 2/3 was.
    - kidsil 3y ago
      I had the same shock but with reading. They're very much ahead in Europe in terms of reading levels.
  - wharvle 3y ago
    Anecdotally, it seems like working with fractions is where a lot of people fall off the math-train and never get back on. … yes, that early.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Fractions and negative numbers. And, to be fair, they're the first math concepts that aren't intuitive. Which IMHO leads to some people not studying, then feeling lost, then rationalizing their lack of effort as "I'm bad at math" or "Math is hard."
      - Ferret7446 3y ago
        Fractions are pretty intuitive. Is the pizza or cake analogy really that advanced?
        wharvle 3y ago
        One third times one fifth loses a lot of folks. As does addition and subtraction of fractions that don’t start with the same denominator, for that matter. They might figure out what to do to pass the test, but they may not get it.
        chrisfinazzo 3y ago
        Can confirm - While I was decent at math up to a point, fractions and long division in 4th Grade sent me down a hole that took me years to get out of...until Algebra II as a junior in HS crushed me. I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class. I actually did reasonably well in Algebra for the first quarter or so until it all fell apart.
        wharvle 3y ago
        I re-invented what turned out to be short division (no joke! I wouldn’t learn it had a name until I was in my late 20s) because I hated long division so much, same year we started doing long division in school (4th grade? 3rd? IDK). Fits in about the same space as the original problem unless it’s printed so small that you have to rewrite it, and way less room for transcription errors. I also find it clearer but that may just be me (fwiw I’m “bad at math”—I find it incredibly boring and basically can’t follow proof- and equation/identity-based stuff, I have to turn it all into algorithmic thinking to have a prayer of understanding it; i.e. my opinion on the superiority of short division is that of a mathematical imbecile, so, grain of salt) > I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class. It doesn’t help that in chemistry, 1 + 1 may be 1. Or 3. :-) [edit] short division: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_division https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_division Under the “example” section, the little superscripts are what you write in by hand on the problem as you work it, at least as I did it. 9/4 in the hundreds place is 2 with 1 remainder, so write 2 up above as part of the solution and a 1 superscript next to the 5 in the problem itself (tens place), now that’s 15, divide that, 3 goes in the tens place of the solution, write the remainder (3) next to the digit in the ones place as a superscript and do it again, if you need to keep going just add a decimal point and zeroes as required. Way faster than working long division, takes up less space, and less error prone (imo). What’s actually going on is clearer (again, imo)
  - ants_everywhere 3y ago
    It's not that they're rare, it's that it legitimately is an easy error to make even if you understand it to be an error. Even people who work with equations every day will occasionally make careless mistakes like this. That's why mathematicians joke about how it's important to make an even number of sign errors. To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal... But it's enough of a cognitive barrier that it doesn't surprise me that it would impact the behavior even of people who would answer correctly on a test. Where it does get easy is if you work with the same set of fractions every day. For example, if you work in construction in the US you can probably quickly order the fractions commonly used for measurement, e.g. 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 3/4 etc. But 1/3 isn't one of these. Now that I think about it, they probably should have just chosen a fraction that you can find on a tape measure, like 3/8.
    - JadeNB 3y ago
      > To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal... You absolutely don't have to remember that x |-> 1/x is order reversing, and, for most people, shouldn't—you immediately give two or three other methods (I don't understand what "write down the equation" means) that are a much better way for the average person to check this.
      - ants_everywhere 3y ago
        Yes, but I was also speaking generally about fractions since that was the context of the comment I was responding to. For example, consider: 1/1123 < 1/1092. Is that inequality true? The fastest way to check is to compare the denominators and adjust for the way division interacts with the inequality. You can't really draw that pie chart quickly. You could write the equation down and multiply both sides though. For 1/3 vs 1/4 yes you could draw it quickly. Or you could fill a glass 1/3 full of water and one 1/4 and compare them. But that's a pretty special case for small enough denominators.
  - JadeNB 3y ago
    > This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on. I literally had an argument with a room full of US university professors about whether or not 30% and 1/3 were the same thing.
    - grigri907 3y ago
      ... and what was your answer?
      - JadeNB 3y ago
        > ... and what was your answer? The correct one, that 30% is less than 1/3.
  - acdha 3y ago
    I thought so as well but A&W backs that version: https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Average Americans that frequent QSR’s don’t math so good.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Or perhaps all those people on here who defend US Standard measurements over metric and quote the fractions they know over decimals as an advantage are a minority? Perhaps the average Joe would be better off with mm rather than 1/16" increments.
- refurb 3y ago
  Wait, did Snopes say this was real because of a news article that contain hearsay?
  - a_random_canuck 3y ago
    Do people think the NY Times reports hearsay as fact? Here, straight from the horse's mouth: https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Based on a "focus group" discussion which are well known for selecting the brightest bunch of people who have nothing better to do than answer questions for 2 hours and get a coupon for free fries.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
foob 3y ago
It's also important to take any corporation's explanation for increasing their own margins with an extremely large grain of salt. I'm not doubting in the slightest that consumers had some confusion around the fractions, but all it would take for the company to revert their campaign is for the increase in sales to insufficiently offset the increase in their own costs. Blaming it on consumer stupidity afterwards washes their hands of any responsibility for backpedaling, and makes for a memorable and repeatable story that increases brand recognition while simultaneously painting them as heroically trying to offer more value for the same cost.
m463 3y ago
VINCENT: And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald's. And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? JULES: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? VINCENT: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the f*** a Quarter Pounder is. JULES: Then what do they call it? VINCENT: They call it Royale with Cheese. JULES: Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac? VINCENT: Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac. Aside: a lot of tax preparation services, or their services that let you upload your data - the privacy policy says they can all "use" your financial info.
- nusl 3y ago
  Personally I prefer Big Kahuna Burger
filoleg 3y ago
You say “this is America”, but my mother (who grew up in USSR/Russia and was in her mid 30s at the time) was seriously asking middle-schooled me on multiple occasions whether 0.7 liters of milk was less than 0.55 liters. I don’t remember the exact numbers, i just remember that the smaller volume one had 2 digits past the decimal, and the larger one just had 1 digit. And no, she wasn’t testing my knowledge, she was seriously confused, as she would ask me that even later in life. Mind you, she has a masters degree. She is in her early 50s right now, and she is fully of sound mind to this day, not senile or anything like that. Imo, this type of silliness is rather common across many different places, but Americans just tend to own it and not be afraid of coming off silly (if that’s how they genuinely end up behaving in a given situation).

sharps1 3y ago

I had to look this up as I didn’t grow up in the States. It was A&W. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr... Crazy.

cityofdelusion 3y ago
This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on.
- MBCook 3y ago
  Reportedly that’s the answer they got in focus groups when they tried to figure out why it failed. 4 > 3.
  - ckw 3y ago
    So why didn't they start selling 1/5 pounders?
    - zo1 3y ago
      Quarter and pounder rhymes so rolls off people's tongues. Fifta-Pounder? Fifth-Pounder? Five-Pounder? For all we know, marketing vetoed it cause they were lazy.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        How 'bout a five-ouncer ? Or would that suffer by seeming microscopic when listed close to "32 ounce" drinks ?
- maximus-decimus 3y ago
  I did teacher's college in Canada and the teacher who taught math said his biggest surprise when he moved from Europe to Canada is how terrible people were with fraction. I think he asked a barista to fill his cup to 2/3 and they couldn't do it because they didn't know what 2/3 was.
  - kidsil 3y ago
    I had the same shock but with reading. They're very much ahead in Europe in terms of reading levels.
- wharvle 3y ago
  Anecdotally, it seems like working with fractions is where a lot of people fall off the math-train and never get back on. … yes, that early.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Fractions and negative numbers. And, to be fair, they're the first math concepts that aren't intuitive. Which IMHO leads to some people not studying, then feeling lost, then rationalizing their lack of effort as "I'm bad at math" or "Math is hard."
    - Ferret7446 3y ago
      Fractions are pretty intuitive. Is the pizza or cake analogy really that advanced?
      - wharvle 3y ago
        One third times one fifth loses a lot of folks. As does addition and subtraction of fractions that don’t start with the same denominator, for that matter. They might figure out what to do to pass the test, but they may not get it.
        chrisfinazzo 3y ago
        Can confirm - While I was decent at math up to a point, fractions and long division in 4th Grade sent me down a hole that took me years to get out of...until Algebra II as a junior in HS crushed me. I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class. I actually did reasonably well in Algebra for the first quarter or so until it all fell apart.
        wharvle 3y ago
        I re-invented what turned out to be short division (no joke! I wouldn’t learn it had a name until I was in my late 20s) because I hated long division so much, same year we started doing long division in school (4th grade? 3rd? IDK). Fits in about the same space as the original problem unless it’s printed so small that you have to rewrite it, and way less room for transcription errors. I also find it clearer but that may just be me (fwiw I’m “bad at math”—I find it incredibly boring and basically can’t follow proof- and equation/identity-based stuff, I have to turn it all into algorithmic thinking to have a prayer of understanding it; i.e. my opinion on the superiority of short division is that of a mathematical imbecile, so, grain of salt) > I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class. It doesn’t help that in chemistry, 1 + 1 may be 1. Or 3. :-) [edit] short division: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_division https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_division Under the “example” section, the little superscripts are what you write in by hand on the problem as you work it, at least as I did it. 9/4 in the hundreds place is 2 with 1 remainder, so write 2 up above as part of the solution and a 1 superscript next to the 5 in the problem itself (tens place), now that’s 15, divide that, 3 goes in the tens place of the solution, write the remainder (3) next to the digit in the ones place as a superscript and do it again, if you need to keep going just add a decimal point and zeroes as required. Way faster than working long division, takes up less space, and less error prone (imo). What’s actually going on is clearer (again, imo)
- ants_everywhere 3y ago
  It's not that they're rare, it's that it legitimately is an easy error to make even if you understand it to be an error. Even people who work with equations every day will occasionally make careless mistakes like this. That's why mathematicians joke about how it's important to make an even number of sign errors. To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal... But it's enough of a cognitive barrier that it doesn't surprise me that it would impact the behavior even of people who would answer correctly on a test. Where it does get easy is if you work with the same set of fractions every day. For example, if you work in construction in the US you can probably quickly order the fractions commonly used for measurement, e.g. 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 3/4 etc. But 1/3 isn't one of these. Now that I think about it, they probably should have just chosen a fraction that you can find on a tape measure, like 3/8.
  - JadeNB 3y ago
    > To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal... You absolutely don't have to remember that x |-> 1/x is order reversing, and, for most people, shouldn't—you immediately give two or three other methods (I don't understand what "write down the equation" means) that are a much better way for the average person to check this.
    - ants_everywhere 3y ago
      Yes, but I was also speaking generally about fractions since that was the context of the comment I was responding to. For example, consider: 1/1123 < 1/1092. Is that inequality true? The fastest way to check is to compare the denominators and adjust for the way division interacts with the inequality. You can't really draw that pie chart quickly. You could write the equation down and multiply both sides though. For 1/3 vs 1/4 yes you could draw it quickly. Or you could fill a glass 1/3 full of water and one 1/4 and compare them. But that's a pretty special case for small enough denominators.
- JadeNB 3y ago
  > This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on. I literally had an argument with a room full of US university professors about whether or not 30% and 1/3 were the same thing.
  - grigri907 3y ago
    ... and what was your answer?
    - JadeNB 3y ago
      > ... and what was your answer? The correct one, that 30% is less than 1/3.
- acdha 3y ago
  I thought so as well but A&W backs that version: https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...
- reactordev 3y ago
  Average Americans that frequent QSR’s don’t math so good.
- happymellon 3y ago
  Or perhaps all those people on here who defend US Standard measurements over metric and quote the fractions they know over decimals as an advantage are a minority? Perhaps the average Joe would be better off with mm rather than 1/16" increments.
refurb 3y ago
Wait, did Snopes say this was real because of a news article that contain hearsay?
- a_random_canuck 3y ago
  Do people think the NY Times reports hearsay as fact? Here, straight from the horse's mouth: https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...
  - peteradio 3y ago
    Based on a "focus group" discussion which are well known for selecting the brightest bunch of people who have nothing better to do than answer questions for 2 hours and get a coupon for free fries.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

foob 3y ago

It's also important to take any corporation's explanation for increasing their own margins with an extremely large grain of salt. I'm not doubting in the slightest that consumers had some confusion around the fractions, but all it would take for the company to revert their campaign is for the increase in sales to insufficiently offset the increase in their own costs. Blaming it on consumer stupidity afterwards washes their hands of any responsibility for backpedaling, and makes for a memorable and repeatable story that increases brand recognition while simultaneously painting them as heroically trying to offer more value for the same cost.

m463 3y ago

VINCENT: And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald's. And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? JULES: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? VINCENT: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the f*** a Quarter Pounder is. JULES: Then what do they call it? VINCENT: They call it Royale with Cheese. JULES: Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac? VINCENT: Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac. Aside: a lot of tax preparation services, or their services that let you upload your data - the privacy policy says they can all "use" your financial info.

nusl 3y ago
Personally I prefer Big Kahuna Burger

filoleg 3y ago

You say “this is America”, but my mother (who grew up in USSR/Russia and was in her mid 30s at the time) was seriously asking middle-schooled me on multiple occasions whether 0.7 liters of milk was less than 0.55 liters. I don’t remember the exact numbers, i just remember that the smaller volume one had 2 digits past the decimal, and the larger one just had 1 digit. And no, she wasn’t testing my knowledge, she was seriously confused, as she would ask me that even later in life. Mind you, she has a masters degree. She is in her early 50s right now, and she is fully of sound mind to this day, not senile or anything like that. Imo, this type of silliness is rather common across many different places, but Americans just tend to own it and not be afraid of coming off silly (if that’s how they genuinely end up behaving in a given situation).