Hold on there hot shot, they're likely saying the required scanning resolution of submittals. While not incredibly clear, 300dpi is the general high-resolution setting on most scanners and they're just indicating as such.
I think you're actually the one misunderstanding here. The "72 DPI" that's output to EXIF doesn't actually mean anything since the actual resolution is dependent on the display medium. The camera produces a fixed number of pixels and your LCD screen/computer monitor/printer creates an image of a certain DPI (72 for most monitors and between 300 and 1200 for most printers).
> The "72 DPI" that's output to EXIF doesn't actually mean anything since the actual resolution is dependent on the display medium.
Well hello, that's exactly what I tried to explain to said family member. In particular, he noticed that the EXIF said 240dpi and assumed that the DSLR is no good, because "it's not 300dpi".
I don't know if that's necessarily related to not performing well in algebra as much as it's related to not understanding some relatively complicated technical details. Which is inexcusable if these people are claiming to be professionals, but I wouldn't expect most people to get it right away.
My problem with said person wasn't that he didn't understand the technical meaning of "dpi" (not understanding it is perfectly forgivable to a nontechnical person), but that he flat out refused to follow my attempt of explaining that it is simply number of pixels divided by number of inches. Now, if that person was unknown to me, I would assume that he is being rude, but in this case I knew him well enough to conclude that his wilful ignorance was due to "fear of math" (he never learned basic fractions in school, and moreover he had a big enough ego to consider such knowledge unnecessary, which put him in a state of denial).
Social expectation is a big part of how a technological society functions. Trains run on time, garbage cans are airtight and emit no odors, and the streets have no trash on them in Stuttgart because people expect things to be that way. If we let innumeracy be acceptable in the US, the quality of our workforce will decline.
Failing to understand that an in-camera DPI of 240 doesn't correlated to a print DPI of 240 is not "innumeracy". It's frankly the logical and intuitive thing to assume.
If one spends zero time thinking about the issue. I'd rather live in a society where people did so and held the bit of knowledge you just related in some esteem. The US is not like that anymore.
