Rebuttal - was: OT: Non Scirocco, but car related

[vwdaun at yahoo.com (Daun Yeagley)]

--- julie@menloparkrandd.com wrote:

> A MAN WHO KNOWS HIS MATH
> He writes:
> I was riding to work yesterday when I observed a female
> driver, who cut right in front of a pickup truck, causing
> the driver to drive onto the shoulder to avoid hitting
> her.

<Major snippage>

This little forward sounded really familiar to me...   so I
went digging in my inbox.  Sure enough, TMB (The Mad
Bastard, or Jason Brunberg for those who've never met him)
sent this around back in 2001.  Our old buddy Jason Cammisa
wrote a rebuttal of said story, which I thought was far
funnier than the original post, which is why I saved it. 
Sorry it's a little hard decipher:


At 03:00 PM 8/9/2001 , Jason Brunberg wrote:

Remember arithmetic classes in elementary school? How about
math in high
school then? Do you recall learning about statistics and
how to apply them?
What about plain ole common sense? Well, here's a fella
who, contrary to the
nature of man, does remember and has applied the necessary
thought processes
to "figger it out".....

I remember enough of my math classes to figure out a
mistake in the logic in this calculation as well as some
math errors:



I drive 48 miles each way every day to work, that's 96
miles each day. Of
these, 16 miles each way is bumper-to-bumper. Most of the
bumper-to-bumper
is on an 8 lane highway so if you just look at the 7 lanes
I am not in,
that means I pass something like a new car every 40 feet
per lane. That's 7
cars every 40 feet for 32 miles. That works out to be 982
cars every mile,
or 31,424 cars.

Let's think about this a second:

One car every 40 feet.
One mile is 5280 feet.

Math Mistake #1:
That means there are (5280/40) 132 cars per mile in each
lane, times 7 is = 924, *not* 982.
In 7 lanes for 32 miles assuming the above, 29,568 cars,
not 31,424.

Logic Mistake:  Based on 40 feet/car and all that other
crap, we now have just under 30,000 cars.  What makes this
guy think that he's actually going to pass every one of
those cars?!  The only way that his calculation would be
correct was if everyone was at a complete standstill for
the entire time it took him to *pass* the 32 miles of
stopped-dead cars.  

And if it were the case that the cars were standing still,
why would there be 40 feet between each car.  Let's take
the average length of a car ay 187 inches.  That
corresponds to 15' 7".   Assuming each person left 4 feet 5
inches between them and the car in front of them, that
would give us an even 20 feet per car.  That would double
the number of cars the guy passed to almost 60,000.  But I
still want to know why his lane was moving and nobody
else's is.

Of course, let's assume that 4 lanes are travelling in his
direction and 4 are travelling in the other direction...
there aren't too many 16-total-lane highways out there. 
And let's assume that all 4 lanes on his side of the road
are going at about the same speed, as they generally do in
stop-and-go traffic when measured over a long portion of
roadway.  That means he winds up passing a net of just
about 0 cars over the 32 miles that are on his side of the
road.  Of course, in reality, he'll pass a few and then
they'll pass him, etc.

So I think it's safe to say that he'll come in visual
contact with about 50 other cars travelling in his
direction.  The cars travelling on the other side of the
road aren't important, since there's usually a median
there.  In fact, most stop-and-go traffic will average
around 20mph -- so that means that the traffic on the other
side of the road would be moving past him at like 40mph. 
Add to that that morning and evening rush-hour traffic is
usually not bi-directionally symmetrical, meaning that the
traffic on the other side is probably moving more quickly
than he is.  So let's say his side averages 20mph and the
other side averages 40mph.  Do you really think he'd come
into "contact" with another motorist potentially 7 lanes
away from him (i.e. more than 120 feet) and travelling at a
closing speed of 60mph!?  It's doubtful that any woman on
the other side of the road would notice him flipping the
"eagle". 



Even though the rest of the 32 miles is not bumper to
bumper, I figure I
pass at least another 4000 cars.


What?  Now I know that even Jason Brunberg doesnt' drive
*that* fast!   Let's assume that there is 40 feet from the
front of each car to the front of the next car for the
remaining 16 miles which is a one-way road with 2 lanes,
and assume that traffic is moving at 40mph on average.  The
driver of the story would have to pass 80,000 feet of cars
(4000 cars * 40 feet / 2 lanes) over 16 miles.  That means
that he would have to drive 80,000 feet in addition to the
84,480 feet (=16 miles) that the other cars are doing, and
do it all in the same time (24 minutes @ 40mph) that
everyone else did it.

That means he would have to travel 77.9mph on the MEDIAN
the whole time to be able to pass that many cars.

Even if you assume that the road was one lane in each
direction and that he didn't pass a single car going the
same direction as he did, the cars on the other side of the
road (assuming they were travelling at the same speed he
was) would be 1 foot 1.44 inches away from one another. 
I'm from New York and even *we* don't tailgate that badly.

So let's assume it's a 2-lane road and he's not passing
anyone in his lane.  Given 40 feet per car over 16 miles,
he'll pass 2,112 cars if everyone is going the same speed.



That brings the number to something like 36,000 cars I pass
every day.

Well, we know that's wrong.  We calculated it as 50 + 2112
= 2162.



Statistically, half of these are driven by females, that's
18,000. 

Bullshit.  In rush hour traffic, the number of women is
typically far less than 40% because the proportion of men
working is considerably higher.  To be nice, let's say 40%.
 So the real number is 2162 x 0.4 = 864.8



In any
given group of females 1 in 28 are having the worst day of
their
period. That's 642.

864.8 / 28 = 30.88 women.



 According to Cosmopolitan, 70% describe their love life
as dissatisfying or rewarding. That's 449.

Logic error #2.  Rewarding?  Why would they be annoyed
then?  If they find their love life rewarding, it wouldn't
matter that they're having their period, so we can discount
this.  Let's change it to 35% that find it "dissatisfying".
 That makes 30.88 * .35 = 10.81 women.



 According to the National
Institute of Health, 22% of all females have seriously
considered suicide or
homicide. 

Yikes, what a nutty bunch the NIH questioned!  But okay 11
* .22 = 2.37 women.



That's 98. And 34% describe men as their biggest problem.
That's
33.

That's 0.80 women.




 According to the National Rifle Association 5% of all
females carry
weapons and this number is increasing.


That's 0.04029 women.



That means that EVERY SINGLE DAY, I drive past at least one
female that has
a lousy love life, thinks men are her biggest problem, has
seriously
considered suicide or homicide, is having the worst day of
her period, AND
is armed.

Um yeah.  The story is quite different.

Out of 2162 women he passed, only 0.04029 meets that
criterion.  That means there is an 0.0019 chance that a
women meets this criterion.  Out of the approximately 140
million women in this country, that makes less than 2609 at
any given time.

I'll take my chances. 

"HEY BITCH!  WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!"
<me flipping the Eagle>

:)
Jay



Daun Yeagley - Wilmington Ohio
'80 Scirocco                 '81 Scirocco S 16v to be?
'86 Scirocco 8v              '88 Scirocco 16v 
'88 Scirocco Slegato (Gino!) '96 Passat GLX Wagon
'56 Cessna 172
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts - Ehrlich's Law.

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