My latest and to date most very embarrassing tv addiction is a ‘reality’ competition where young women compete to become a bottle-slinging, booty-shaking bartender for some American bar franchise. (In this case, what compels me watch is the bar owner — an interesting character, and also the ongoing Camille Paglia-like dialectic about is it okay for young women to dress like prostitutes and dance like strippers if they are doing it on their own terms?)

Alas for some of the girls, one of the ongoing challenges set by the bar owner is to quickly and accurately calculate the change owed to the beer-drinking customers.

The current frontrunner — despite her considerable talent in booty-shaking — looks like she might be scuppered by her complete inability to make the right change. It’s really quite funny, and I keep thinking, back in school if only she had known where it was all going to lead… maybe math would have seemed a little more worthwhile.

I agree with your point further down the page about the futility of higher-level math for most of us.