Maths

I kinda like maths. I was okay at it at school and even now am fond of some decent data and stats.

I'm also aware of the tragic stat that says 47% of Australian don't have the literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills to get through everyday life. (My spelling might just put me in the category, so I'm not judging!!) There was also a news article recently that employers are fed up with appalling maths and literacy skills leading to work littered with errors.

But is it any wonder when popular TV programs like Sunrise, serve up numbers like these??

Frankly, I was horrified.

Is there anyone there at a presenter or producer level who looked at those numbers and yelled WTF???

By my reckoning, once you've saved 100% it's free - so how the heck can you save up to 5714%??

Did they have the Year 10 work experience kid doing the sums? Even then I'd expect a kid above Grade 6 to know better.

Shame Sunrise, shame.

(BTW, FYI the savings are, from top to bottom: 83%, 70%, 80% and 98%)

The person working out these equations clearly sees maths like this:

Spelling

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that I’m not the world’s greatest speller. It’s been a life long plague that my mother kindly described as ‘creative spelling’ and that appears to have been passed on to my children.

One of the girls wrote a note to Elaine, her teacher in Grade 2, after continually being asked to be quiet. She pretended it was from me.

Der Elan, my dorta (and she managed to spell her own name correctly) is alowd to tork in clas.

Okay, it could have been me, but it wasn’t.

The situation isn’t helped by the fact my partner likes to constantly remind us all that he was the Grade 6 Spelling Bee Champion at his school. (Which I particularly like to remind him of when he sends me emails with glaring errors – there’s that MBA shining through!)

I can only hope that high school is going to be able to sort out my daughter’s spelling, but I’m also hoping you’re all being vaguely forgiving of mine….