In which John discusses rounding in math and how oil companies use it to cheat you out of millions of pennies on your gasoline purchases. Visit Nerdfighteria: http://www.nerdfighters.com You can email exxon here: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Imports/contactus/contactus_contact.aspx This is the letter I wrote them: Dear Exxon, My name is John Green. I am a novelist and videoblogger. Due to your use of radically unfair traditional methods of rounding mathematics (which rounds up 5/9ths of the …
DENIS
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“Even at the very height of the 2008 oil bubble, a gallon of gasoline was still less expensive than a gallon of Fierce Grape Gatorade. Which strikes me as just a little bit odd since oil must be mined from the depths of the earth, shipped across the world, then refined, then trucked to a gas station, then sunk into a gigantic underground container. Whereas to produce Fierce Grape Gatorade I believe all you have to do is milk purple aligators.”
GENIOUS!
they rule is that anything higher than .50 gets rounded up, and anything less, .498 gets rounded down. If it’s .50 exactly as far as you can tell, then it is split up/down half the time based on the number that came before, as a general rule, round to even numbers. 4.50=4 5.50 = 6
I laughed all through this….. Stupid third grade math!!
To be fair a lot of companies round up as long as there is a decimal of a penny. So if something costs $4.011 they’ll charge you an extra 9/10 of a penny. Be happy the oil company isn’t doing that.
maybe a couple times when he blinked you blinked at the same time….
theres something to think about…
hey! I’ve heard that Lincoln didn’t actually say that!
I have a little game I play whenever I watch his videos. I like to count how many times he blinks
throughout the 2:37 seconds of the video, he blinks 3 times
Good luck with Exxon… they recently refused (after a fierce decades-long legal battle) to pay damages to the commercial fishermen whose livelihoods were severely impinged upon by the 1989 oil spill in Prince William Sound. So get a lawyer if you want that 8 cents.
xGatorade is really expensive when you look at it like that.
//Thank you!//
I am taking my first college physics class where I have just learned the even/odd rule for rounding.
I was livid.
I called all my friends and explained to them how we’ve all been lied to our whole lives by teachers and parents.
Strangely, none of them found this as infuriating as I did.
I feel validated knowing you care too.
you really sure cal your mathematician and verify this… i know your history with math… lol
Wikipedia= an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards.
1.0 can’t be rounded down anymore than 2.0 can be rounded up.
Technically it’s not five tenths of the time, though. The range of 0.000~1 through 4.9999~ is smaller than the range of 5.000~ through 9.999~~
Sorry, I misunderstood. I was trying to be a smart ass, and ended up sounding like a dumb ***. No harm intended, I promise!
4) If I wasn’t in a hurry, I could just calculate the exact pump reading to three places that would equal $30.00499, but that’s totally Monk. 
BTW, if you just fill up and stop at a random number, you are being honest and fair with the gas-station. Half the time you take up to a half-cent free, and half the time you pay up to a half cent extra, over the long haul. If you are trying to hit an even number, you are probably averaging about a quarter-cent free gas per visit. You’re the rip.
3) Instead, If I’m in a hurry, I try to see how many micro-squirts I can get out of each penny, and then finish by getting this number without advancing the dollar-readout. So, if the pump reads $30.10, and I can get 3 micro-squirts without it going to $30.11, then I know I must be close to the $30.10499 mark, right? I’ve maximized the amount of gas I can get for a penny. This also means that I am consistently taking almost a full EXTRA half-penny of gas from the pump without paying for it.
2) So, if you are trying to hit a round number as you fill up, say $30, the point you hit is a somewhat random number between $30.00000 and $30.00499. I contend that most of the time, the number people actually hit when trying to do this is below $30.00249, or a 1/4-cent above the target. Therefore, people may be cheating THEMSELVES out of a penny per four visits to the pump, on average… depending on their motor skills and reaction times.
Wow, this is a Big Nerd fallacy: “if you round 1 to 4 down, & 5 to 9 up, you are rounding up 5/9ths of the time.” WRONG: Let’s say the pump-meter is accurate to three decimal places. You pump exactly 1.001 cents of gas, you pay 1 cent. You pump 1.099: you pay 1 cent. So the range of ‘1.0′ to ‘1.099 is getting rounded down. That means that we are really rounding down ‘zero to four’ or FIVE/TENTHS of the time. If you pump 1.499 cents worth, you got virtually all of a half cent for nothing!
When I originally commented I clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get four emails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service? Thanks!
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