This cheered me up a bit today after feeling thoroughly rubbish all day: Camelot have had to withdraw some scratch cards because some punters are too dumb to understand negative numbers. When told that to win you have to reveal a number (a temperature) lower than one printed on the card, some consumers were outraged that they were told that they hadn’t won when they scratched off a -6 when the number they had to get lower than was -8.
"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher, not lower, than -8, but I’m not having it." said one mentally challenged woman from the Manchester area. "I think Camelot are giving people the wrong impression – the card doesn’t say to look for a colder or warmer temperature, it says to look for a higher or lower number. Six is a lower number than 8. Imagine how many people have been misled."
If all it takes to be ‘misled’ is to have a total lack of primary school level numeracy, it’s a wonder these people can tie their shoes in the morning – but I guess that’s why slip-ons were invented.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Thanks for the chuckle. They wouldn’t be buying a scratch card in the first place if they weren’t mathematically challenged though would they?
November 8th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
This is … weird! Guess my little cousin would have known better.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
[...] [Dieser Beitrag könnte als deutsches Pendant von diesem aufgefasst werden] [...]
November 8th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
These kinds of things often make me wonder how us humans manage to keep society running.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Haha, I love that last quote about slip-ons XD
It is quite scary, yes!
November 8th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Yes, Steve, please keep making fun of our good ol’ US of A while posting local stories like this!
November 8th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I guess they need to print a “number line” on the cards for reference purposes
.
November 8th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Yup, maybe something like -10
November 8th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Duh, why has this deleted the rest of the post? :’(
November 9th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
really funny.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Sad but true; the education system was going downhill when I left school. We were the first year to do GCSEs.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Am I the only one that thinks using negative numbers(even for temperature) in a lottery a bit out of the ordinary? Doesn’t excuse the poor math skills of the consumer mind you, but it is a bit unorthodox, no? I don’t know, just seems like someone at Camelot could have seen this coming.
November 11th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
“However, because of the potential for player confusion we have decided to withdraw the game.”
Another victory for the consumer… As a 23 year old I now want to kill myself.