Ridge Demonstrates Sly Math Trick To Awed Press!
ATLANTA - Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said a new security system for foreign travelers will make sure ``our borders remain open to travelers but closed to terrorists.''
Ridge was at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to greet travelers on two flights from Brazil and Chile. He said the system will be ``easy for travelers to use, but hard for terrorists to avoid.''
He said the system added only 15 seconds to processing times at Atlanta's airport this morning.
On the surface, it sounds innocuous enough – after all, what’s 15 lousy seconds after a 6-hour intercontinental flight? Well, the “average” time (I won’t get started on that one, except to repeat that the average net worth inside a bar rises dramatically when Bill Gates walks in) is just 45 seconds to begin with. Still hardly enough time to blink your eyes, right? All is rosy and, as Mussolini liked to say, all the trains are on time.
Just for fun, however, let’s divide 15 seconds by 45 seconds and multiply by 100. The nets a 33.3% increase in waiting times. But the times are so small anyway, you say, why does it matter?
This is an old trick called “slicing the salami.” The idea behind this ages-old con is to make the unit of reporting sound so small that it seems insignificant. I’d like to believe that the highly paid spin doctors our tax dollars support could have come up with something less transparent. A 33.3% increase means the costs, inconveniences, number of personnel and all associated processes also increase by 33.3%.
Furthermore, assuming no more people are hired (maybe our “service economy” is not headed to the endpoint of everybody working by serving each other hamburgers, as Pat Buchanan liked to say - maybe we’re headed to an economy where we all support ourselves by checking each other for terrorist connections. "But," as Mort Sahl liked to say, "I digress…"), there is another hidden fallacy.
Not everyone is at the head of the line.
Assume one competent screener and a queue. Inbound tourist #1 goes directly to the competent screener and has “The Ridge Experience,” that is, a 45 second normal screening plus 15 additional seconds to photograph him, fingerprint him, and do all the necessary background checks to insure he is not a threat to any American target listed in The Old Farmers’ Almanac. Tourist #1 heads for Disney World to ride on Space Mountain and notices no difference.
It’s not much worse for inbound tourist #2. He does everything the same as tourist #1 but, for some reason, his walk to the taxi stand is 30 seconds longer than it was before the additional screening. It’s because he has to wait the 15 seconds extra for tourist #1 as well as his own allotted screening time. Do I detect a formula here?
Yes I do. If tourist #1 waits taverage+15 and tourist#2 waits 2(taverage+15) then we can formulate that tourist #n will have to wait n(taverage+15). Let’s do the math! Do you have your calculator batteries charged?
This is a story problem. Don’t we hate those! - Flaming Death Airlines flight 666 from Nairobi to Boston has 253 foreigners onboard. There are no goats, no chickens, no psychos, and no terrorists. Lets plug in the numbers!
n(taverage+15) = total wait
n = 253
253(45+15) = 15180 seconds
But that doesn’t really tell us anything. We need to compare it to something meaningful, such as the previous delay. Easy! – That’s just n(taverage)
253(45) = 11385 seconds
Now let’s see how much longer passenger #n has to wait than he did before. We just subtract!
15180 – 11385 = 3795 seconds
That’s a lot of seconds, let’s convert it to minutes…
3795/60 = 63.25 minutes
Holy Shit! That’s more than an hour! (Assuming tourist253 doesn’t have to get out of line to pee or anything)
How did Tom Ridge turn a whole hour for tourist253 into a 15 measly seconds?
Easy! He’s a fucking liar! He doesn't really give a shit how long you have to wait because he has a private jet! All he really cares about is your expectations, that you believe you'll only be delayed 15 seconds - long after you've paid for your ticket and are stuck doing the "pee dance" and sweating like a pig in a long line. Study your math well, boys and girls, especially statistics and how to “doctor” them and you too can grow up and earn an impressive title like “Homeland Security Secretary” and get your own private jet! Is that the only answer? I dunno...Depends™.
Alternatively, if you hate studying math, start right now garnering important political connections – or, easier still; just grow up in an important American dynasty type family. Then you can hire lackeys to jigger the math for you. Better still, hire foreign lackeys, Bangalore grads, for example, to do the math. They’re much cheaper - and they don't seem to mind waiting in line! It'll probably be much longer than usual when the next flight arrives...
Subtopic: Flypaper Propaganda
The following quote is frequently attributed to Albert Einstein, but it never made Bartlett's. Most often, you see it in flyers that stockbrokers send you. “Hmmm…Einstein,” you say, “wasn’t he like, you know, the smartest human being ever?”
1. Compound Interest Miracle: Albert Einstein described compound interest as “the greatest mathematical discovery of all time.” Dividends always contribute to total returns and are your clear first choice as the raw material for compounding.
Most stockbrokers don’t really care what Henry David Thoreau said, because that does not sell stocks, and is therefore just verbal liberal effluvia. Take this, for example:
“As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements’; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting a compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.”
Bonus assignment: Write a simple paragraph comparing accumulation at lines at grocery checkouts (or at customs in international airports) to the concept of compound interest.
6:20:56 PM 
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