10 thoughts on “No wonder they went out of business”

  1. That’s not as funny as it may seem. I once taught in a secretarial college where the students were mostly over 16.
    One student would always subtract in this way and I sat her down one day to ask why. She told me that she had been taught to take the smaller number from the larger number.
    She was really bright but somehow had got this mixed up and her teachers had never figured it out. She had gone half way through year 11 before the principal of the school told her that she would not be able to get any further with her education and should leave school.
    It was really sad and it was also hard to convince her of her misunderstanding after all those years without correction.

  2. Barb from Oz – Forgive me if I’m missing something, but the student got tossed out of school for doing subtraction by taking the smaller number from the larger number?

  3. Not exactly kicked out DJ, it was just “suggested.”
    Instead of taking the smaller NUMBER from the larger number, she saw it as taking the smaller DIGIT from the larger digit. So, in the above case, you take the 2 from the 7 and the 4 from the 5. Her answer would have been $15.

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