I don't know if many of you have seen this or not... If you have 25min of free time, try to listen to the audio recording... Better still, try to make it through the entire recording....


http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2007/08/original-recording-of-verizon-customer.html

I listed to it last year. It's a bit infuriating. In all fairness, though, this guy is not a very good teacher for people who are bad at math. Here's how I would have handled it.

Me: Do you agree that there's a difference between 1.00 dollars and 1.00 cents?
VZ: Sure.
Me: And do you also agree that there are 100 cents in a dollar?
VZ: I'm not an idiot.
Me: Ok, do you agree that there's a difference between half a dollar and half a cent?
VZ: Yeah, of course.
Me: Do you know that you can write half a dollar -- which is 50 cents -- as $0.50?
VZ: Again, I'm not stupid.
Me: OK. Now take a look at the decimal. $0.50 = 50.0 cents. Right?
VZ: I see that, but where are we going with this?
Me: Almost done, I promise. Let's divide $0.50 by 10. That equals $0.05. In math, when you divide any number by 10, you move the decimal point one place to the left. The same thing happens to 50.0 cents. Now it becomes 5.00 cents.
VZ: You're losing me.
Me: Hang on a little longer. This is important. Watch what happens when we divide both numbers by 10 again. $0.05 becomes $0.005 and 5.00 cents becomes .500 cents. .005 dollars is equal to .500 cents. The decimal point is not in the same place.
VZ: Wha...
Me: So you see, .002 dollars can't possibly be the same as .002 cents!
VZ: My mind is melting. Help me!