Howlers!

Another benefit to late night blogging -- you just may get a laugh out of it. ;-)

"Howlers" are mathematical flubs, errors or evidence of innumeracy in the the popular media; "mismaths" if you will. The following two quotes were taken from actual newspapers, magazines or other public media from around the world. Sometimes it takes a minute or two to think about what's wrong with their math, but if you think about it you'll figure it out and maybe even get a good laugh out of it.

Here's Howler number 1:

Flight 427 had banked sharply to the left, rolled more than 180 degrees - past the point at which it's wings were perpendicular to the ground - and dropped 6000 feet in 23 seconds.

Imagine that plane's flight. What would it look like falling?

Here's another Howler tangentially related to what we're studying:

You may remember that pi is something to do with calculating dimensions of a circle and derives from dividing 22 by 7, a sum that can be continued indefinitely. Most folks are happy to leave the solution at 3.14 but last week Yasumasa Kanada, a professor at Tokyo University, announced he had calculated it to a billion decimal places on a supercomputer.

There are a couple of things wrong with that one. Think about it...and enjoy a good chuckle. ;-)

If you find a really good Howler in the press Blog it. If we get a good laugh out of it you can count it as your "one mark blog".