True story. I was having trouble sleeping and I went to a big box home improvement store for some custom cut roller blinds. I measured the blinds to the nearest 1/8 inch so less light would leak around the edges. I grab the blinds and go to the blind cutting machine, which has an arm marked off like a ruler to 16ths of an inch, with the cutting blade held by a screw clamp. There are no detents or grooves to force discrete measurements, just a screw clamp, so this machine can do any length between its min and max length.
Well, the young woman who comes looks at the measurements I wrote down and looks at me and says, "The machine doesn't do fractions."
I was floored. She was lying to cover her innumeracy, because she didn't do fractions. If this is indicative of a trend, it's bad news for the future of the United States.
More charitably, she wasn't lying, she was just ignorant (and therefore wrong). An innumerate person might simply not recognize all those extra marks as having any meaning at all, or at least not as having anything to do with those dreaded "fractions" from school.
Well, the young woman who comes looks at the measurements I wrote down and looks at me and says, "The machine doesn't do fractions."
I was floored. She was lying to cover her innumeracy, because she didn't do fractions. If this is indicative of a trend, it's bad news for the future of the United States.